Get kids performance-ready in no time, with Breezin’ Thru Theory and now with Fingerings too! The super-fun Breezin’ Thru Fingerings are timed-response drills for beginning and intermediate players. Kids simply pick their instrument or voice and try to beat the clock matching notes to correct finger positions. As they progress through the levels, students build rapid response and mastery. Level the playing field and accelerate your performance programs by integrating Breezin’ Thru Theory, now with Fingerings too.
Woohoo! Fingerings now available for:
Divisional Feature 18 Band by bryn roberts 26 Orchestra by louanne greer
46 Elementary. . . by chelsea short
52 College.. . . . . . . by tanya allen
8 Introducing TMEA Executive Director Joe Muñoz by karen cross
Learn more about Joe Muñoz’s background and his priorities and vision for TMEA’s future.
20 Advocacy: Education, Translation, Value by eric branscome
Put your music educator skills into practice as an effective music education advocate within your school and community.
34 Establishing a Positive Program Culture by jim shaw and andy easton
Student engagement, clear expectations, a safe environment, and well-paced rehearsals are all components of a positive program culture.
42 Musical Expression from the Start by bob duke
Whether you’re singing or playing an instrument, numerous components of perception and action need to operate together to produce beautiful, expressive music.
ON THE COVER: Ethan Gopez, then a senior at Memorial HS (Frisco ISD) and now a freshman at the University of Texas, rehearses with the All-State 5A Percussion Ensemble. Photo by Karen Cross.
In music-making, expression isn’t the hardest thing. In fact, for most children, it’s the most intuitive thing.
42
COLUMNS
2 From the Editor
4 TMEA News
6 President
12 Band
UPDATES
30 Orchestra
38 Vocal
48 Elementary
54 College
16 Honor Bands & Finalists
24 Undergraduate & Graduate Scholarships
33 Honor Orchestras & Finalists
37 Texas Future Music Educators
45 TMEA Membership Renewals
From the Editor
After 28 years as a music educator and three years as a fine arts administrator, writing my first message as the Executive Director of TMEA is an honor. I look forward to collaborating with you to ensure music education has protected pathways to provide Texas students with life-changing experiences through music. TMEA will continue its work to support high-quality music education and our members who create those experiences.
Learning more about my role’s varied responsibilities, the Board’s unwavering support, and the staff’s expertise, I’m confident we can sustain our operations and chart a course for the continued advancement of the fine arts at the local and state levels. I will work diligently to deliver the level of service and support our members expect and deserve.
As I’ve previously shared with students, parents, administrators, and colleagues, change isn’t good or bad, but rather a natural state of evolution. We reflect on and appreciate the past, act and react today, and plan for a brighter tomorrow. With this balanced perspective, we can embrace change as an opportunity for growth and progress, rather than viewing it as a challenge to overcome.
On the topic of change, this first issue in Volume 93 of Southwestern Musician features some updates in format and design. This letter is an example of those updates. Each month, I’ll share my message here and highlight important information on initiatives and programs in a new series, TMEA News. Along with full-length feature articles, we will continue to publish division-specific strategies in our “Sound Ideas” and “Q&A for Music Teachers” article series. This issue is full of TMEA members’ insights and strategies to help you have a successful start of the school year.
A staple of our magazine will continue to be columns from our President and Vice-Presidents. I encourage you to read these monthly columns as they provide helpful information related to each division of TMEA.
I wish you all the best as you begin the new school year and face the changes that will come. Always remember the positive impact you have on your students—though not always immediately visible, your contribution to their growth is profound and lasting! Also remember that sharing the positive aspects of your program and your students’ successes is vital to setting the framework for an environment that promotes access for all students and overall support for the fine arts.
I can’t wait to see and hear the incredible performances your programs will produce to showcase your talented students and the positive experiences they have through music!
Joe Muñoz Executive Director jmunoz@tmea.org
Editor-in-Chief: Joe Muñoz
Managing Editor: Karen Cross
Advertising Manager: Zachary Gersch
TMEA Executive Board
President: Jesse Cannon II, Fort Worth ISD president@tmea.org / 817-814-2635
President-Elect: Shane Goforth, North Shore Senior HS presidentelect@tmea.org / 713-516-7158
Past-President: Dana Pradervand-Sedatole, University of Houston pastpresident@tmea.org / 713-743-3627
Band Vice-President: Mike Howard, Leander ISD bandvp@tmea.org / 512-570-0161
Orchestra Vice-President: Jennifer Martin, Fort Worth ISD orchestravp@tmea.org / 817-814-2640
Vocal Vice-President: Joshua McGuire, Rock Hill HS vocalvp@tmea.org / 469-219-2300 x 81201
Elementary Vice-President: Christopher Giles, Mireles Elementary elementaryvp@tmea.org / 210-394-0289
College Vice-President: Carter Biggers, Texas Woman’s University collegevp@tmea.org / 940-898-2689
TMEA Staff
Executive Director: Joe Muñoz, jmunoz@tmea.org
Deputy Director: Frank Coachman, fcoachman@tmea.org
Administrative Director: Kay Vanlandingham, kvanlandingham@tmea.org
OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF TEXAS MUSIC EDUCATORS ASSOCIATION
TMEA NEWS
It’s Time to Get to Know Your Candidates
With the general election only two months away, it is a critical time for you and your students’ parents to get to know your candidates and take every opportunity to share with them your story about the importance of high-quality music education for all. TMEA leaders and the Texas Arts Education Campaign will be actively working through this general election and into the next legislative session to advocate for fine arts education. Still, with your local advocacy, we can achieve greater success!
Review the following opportunities to get to know your local candidates and set the foundation for future support of fine arts education by our state’s leaders. When you read on, understand that no one expects you to do everything, but it is critical that you do something. Your small steps can make a big impact.
• Help support a unified message when parents interact with candidates by offering parents sample questions, such as:
Did you know there are [#] fine arts students in our school?
Did you know that on the SAT, Texas All-State musicians score on average 283 points higher than the state average? What do you think about fine arts and its role in educating the whole student?
If elected, will you consider joining the legislative Fine Arts Education Caucus?
• Invite your district’s House of Representatives or Senate candidates to a performance or parent meeting.
• If travel is possible for your program, reserve a time to perform in the state capitol rotunda next spring. The optimal times are midweek during January and February or any weekday in March through May. Getting your legislator to sponsor your performance is a wonderful advocacy opportunity! Learn more and apply at www.tmea.org/capitolrequest.
• When a candidate attends your event, recognize them and thank them for supporting your school and fine arts educa-
JOIN THE CAMPAIGN
Texas Arts Education Campaign is refreshing its database to ensure accuracy of contact information. Register now to stay updated on changes that could affect music education.
www.txartsed.org/join-us
tion. Remember, at the capitol, we advocate for fine arts education given that music is part of fine arts in law and policy.
• Attend a candidate event. Many candidates host local coffees or town halls. When you get an opportunity, ask them what they think about fine arts and its role in educating all students. You can follow up by letting them know that you hope to see them join the legislature’s Fine Arts Education Caucus.
• When TMEA emails you the results of our legislative candidate survey, share them with your students’ parents. While you as a teacher cannot publicly endorse or favor one candidate over another, you can provide educational and informative materials related to an election.
• Early voting begins Monday, October 21. Plan to share information or invite candidates to performances and events before this date given that data shows an increase in early voting.
• Send a follow-up letter, email, or call thanking your candidate for their attendance. Consider including comments like the following: Thank you for supporting our students and the fine arts. I enjoyed meeting you at [event name] and appreciate your thoughts on the importance of fine arts education in our schools. I look forward to seeing you join the legislature’s Fine Arts Education Caucus next spring and supporting access for all students to receive a high-quality fine arts education. I appreciate your support of our program. Please let me know how I can help you advocate for fine arts education.
• Remember that you are not only teaching in the classroom but also shaping the future of your community through your advocacy and voting participation. You are the most influential lobbyist, the key to a candidate’s election to their desired office. Be seen and heard as a positive member of your community and make your voice count in this election and beyond.
• After the election, reach out to the elected representative or senator. Again, invite them to a future performance or event. While the dynamic changes after the election, inviting your legislators to your events offers them wonderful avenues for engagement with your program and parents. Legislators will always be drawn to a group of their constituents.
Sharing the unique impact of music education, as part of a required curriculum, on students and communities is vital as we educate those who will draft legislation to support it. We can never assume people will remember to support us; don’t take it for granted that someone else will be our advocate.
With everyone acting on a few of the ideas offered above, we can generate a movement that can positively influence legislation in the 89th legislative session starting in January. 0
Bobby Francis conducts a performance in VCCH with the TCU Wind Symphony and TCU Mariachi Sangre Royal.
TMEA PRESIDENT JESSE CANNON II
Use music as a tool to teach students about perseverance, collaboration, and the beauty of turning challenges into triumphs.
The Year of the Coffee Bean
Ihope you had the opportunity to recharge this summer, whether you spent it with family, went on vacation, or attended summer conventions. The beginning of the school year brings such a rush. Next to Christmas, it might be my favorite time! As we embark on this new school year, I want to share a story that one of my high school choir directors, Alicia Owens, used to tell us:
A young woman, overwhelmed by life’s difficulties, sought her mother’s advice. In response, her mother placed carrots, eggs, and coffee beans in boiling water. After some time, the carrots became soft, the eggs hard-boiled, and the coffee transformed the water into something new. The mother explained that while all three faced the same adversity—boiling water—they each reacted differently. The carrots weakened, the eggs hardened, but the coffee beans changed the water, turning it into something better.
As you begin this school year, how do you characterize yourself? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean? While many of us are facing issues surrounding public education—with budget cuts, policy changes, and more, how will we react to these challenges? Will we weaken, harden, or transform our challenges into opportunities?
Each new school year includes the opportunity to welcome new
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
check www.tmea .org for updates
September—Renew membership, purchase liability insurance, register for the convention.
October 3—TMEA convention housing reservation system opens online.
November 1—TMEA scholarship online application deadline.
January 16—TMEA convention early registration deadline.
February 12–15—TMEA Clinic/Convention in San Antonio.
students, some joining willingly and others perhaps kicking and screaming. Your approach and resilience will shape their experiences and potentially their futures for years to come. Our mission of making music in the classroom remains vital, and it’s through our dedication that we inspire the next generation.
Resilience in the classroom is crucial for both educators and students. It’s the ability to adapt to challenges, recover from setbacks, and continue moving forward with determination. This year, we might face unexpected disruptions, whether from shifting educational policies or changes within our schools. Our resilience not only helps us navigate these changes but also serves as a powerful example for our students.
As teachers, we serve as the first line of support for our students, modeling resilience by handling difficulties constructively. When we approach problems with a positive attitude and a willingness to find solutions, we demonstrate that challenges are a natural part of life and that overcoming them is possible. Creating a resilient classroom environment is key, as it encourages students to take risks and learn from their mistakes in a space where they are safe to express their thoughts without fear of judgment. By fostering open communication and demonstrating empathy, we help students feel supported, seen, and valued.
Resilience isn’t a new concept for us, and it’s recently evidenced by many of our programs returning to prepandemic enrollment numbers. We’ve done the work to ensure each student at our school can experience a rigorous music education. This comeback shows our ability to adapt and persevere through challenging times, reaffirming our commitment to providing a rich and supportive educational environment.
As music educators, we have a unique opportunity to impact our students’ lives profoundly. The challenges we will encounter this school year should not deter us from our mission. Instead, let’s use these challenges to inspire creativity and resilience in our students.
In the classroom, we can apply the lesson of the coffee bean. When faced with adversity, let’s transform it into a rich, meaningful experience for our students. Encourage
By building strong relationships with our students, staying organized, being adaptable, and taking care of ourselves, we can create an environment in which our students thrive.
them to see obstacles as opportunities to grow and learn. Use music as a tool to teach them about perseverance, collaboration, and the beauty of turning challenges into triumphs.
Let’s approach this new school year with resilience and a commitment to making a difference, no matter the challenges we face. By building strong relationships with our students, staying organized, being adaptable, and taking care of ourselves, we can create an environment in which our students thrive.
So, as we welcome a new group of students into our classrooms, let’s ask ourselves, are we carrots, eggs, or coffee beans? Let’s strive to be the coffee beans that transform our challenges into something wonderful, inspiring our students to do the same.
Together, we can make this school year a success, shaping the future one note at a time!
MEMBER VOLUNTEERS
There are many volunteer service opportunities through which you can become more active in TMEA and help ensure the 2025 TMEA Clinic/Convention is an amazing success for all attendees. Our member volunteers are incredible, and the convention could not function (nor would it be affordable) without their willingness to offer some of their time and talent. Be part of TEAM TMEA and register as a volunteer! You can register and indicate your areas of interest and preferred times by going to www.tmea.org/volunteer.
RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP
If you haven’t yet, be sure to renew your TMEA membership. All 2023–2024 memberships expired two months ago. To enter students in auditions, participate in TMEA programs, and purchase low-cost liability insurance, your membership must be current. For more information and to renew go to www.tmea.org/renew.
PURCHASE LIABILITY INSURANCE
TMEA offers current members the benefit of access to low-cost liability insurance. If
you haven’t purchased this policy before, strongly consider it. Policies purchased last year expired on August 20.
This policy shields you from substantial financial losses incurred through lawsuits related to your role as an educator. Like any other insurance, we hope you never need it, but we want you to be prepared if you do. Learn more about the policy and coverage limits at www.tmea.org/liability.
REGISTER FOR THE CONVENTION
When you renew your membership, be sure to register to attend the 2025 Clinic/ Convention. Our annual event offers amazing professional development opportunities, musical inspiration, budgetstretching deals in the exhibit hall, and wonderful networking, so I hope you plan to attend! Learn more at www.tmea.org/ convention.
PRESIDENT’S CONCERT: THE JASON MAX FERDINAND SINGERS
We’re looking forward to welcoming the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers to our 2025 Clinic/Convention and to witnessing their extraordinary performance on Wednesday at 8 p.m. in Lila Cockrell Theatre. Be sure to purchase your tickets when you register for the convention, or if you already have registered, go to www.tmea.org/addon to learn how to add that purchase to your record.
One thing I love about this choir is that its members are not only award-winning singers but also a wide range of professionals, from lawyers to college professors. Start your 2025 convention off right with musical inspiration and a demonstration of how your daily work encourages your students toward a lifetime of musicmaking. Learn more at www.tmea.org/ presidentsconcert. 0
Jesse Cannon II is Director of Visual & Performing Arts at Fort Worth ISD. president@tmea.org
Introducing TMEA Executive Director
Joe Muñoz
By Karen Cross
With over three decades of experience as a music educator and arts administrator, as well as years of volunteer service in support of TMEA’s mission, Joe Muñoz began serving TMEA as its Executive Director on July 1. The Executive Board hired Joe last fall as our Executive Director Designate, and he worked through a transition period this spring before assuming the role full-time.
“With Joe Muñoz as our new Executive Director, I am confident that TMEA will continue to thrive and grow,” said TMEA President Jesse Cannon II. “His leadership, coupled with a deep awareness of the diverse realities faced in classrooms across all communities, brings a comprehensive understanding of the needs of our teachers and music education in Texas. Under his guidance, we can look forward to increased opportunities for professional development, enhanced visibility of fine arts through advocacy and research, and continued innovation to identify programs and strategies to serve our members’ evolving needs.”
A LIFELONG TEXAN’S MUSICAL PATH
Prior to starting his work as TMEA’s Executive Director, Joe most recently served as Assistant Director of Fine Arts for the Performing Arts in Arlington ISD. Before that, he was a band director for 28 years, serving Pearland, Clear Creek, and Conroe Independent School Districts.
Just like his professional journey, his years as a music student were purely Texan. From his days as a beginning trumpet player at Carl Wunsche MS in Spring ISD, he went on to earn his bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Houston and master’s degree in educational leadership from Stephen F. Austin State University. “Growing up in Texas, where high-quality music education is in every part of our state, gave me unique experiences that helped me grow as a musician, leader, and person,” Joe said.
“It exposed me to great teachers who instructed their ensembles with detailed information that produced impressive results. My 28 years in the classroom, three years in fine arts administration, and the many experiences with my students and colleagues have set the foundation for my service to TMEA as its Executive Director. I will work to ensure every child has access to a high-quality music education, like I did. Positive student experiences through TMEA will continue to be our focus, and providing the best professional development and musical experiences through our annual convention will be our keystone.”
GOALS & PRIORITIES FOR OUR FUTURE
Now that Joe has been serving as our Executive Director for a couple of months, I asked him about his priorities and his vision for TMEA’s future. I hope you enjoy learning more about his perspective and hopes for our future:
What are your top short-term goals and priorities?
A short- and long-term goal is to listen to our members, supporting their development and sustaining high-quality music education in Texas. TMEA will continue our advocacy efforts through an active social media presence that celebrates music education, engages our membership, and educates the greater community about how critical music education is to all students.
We will also continue to advocate for music education through the legislative process. Given November’s general election, another short-term priority is gathering information about the candidates and getting ready for the upcoming legislative session that starts in January. We will be providing members with information related to their legislative candidates and their level of support for the fine arts. Working with our educational and administrative partners, we will explore ways to ensure sequential study of music while school districts continue to implement the requirements of HB 4545.
PROGRAMS
Church Music
Music Business
Music Education
Vocal Performance
Worship Technology
Another short-term priority is to “keep the lights on,” while looking for opportunities to provide access for more students, parents, current and future teachers, and professionals to be involved with TMEA, our activities, and our mission.
What about your long-term goals and priorities?
I would like to pay forward that which has been poured into me through music and by the educators who invested their passion and talent into my personal, professional, and musical development. Like you, I can close my eyes and see the people who made music special to me. In that spirit, TMEA will work to educate future generations about how music education is an essential component of the Required Curriculum in Texas. TMEA will work for pathways where all students can have access to sequential study in music education.
How would you like to see TMEA members get more engaged?
I believe everyone has an opportunity to be active in TMEA’s mission to promote high-quality music education. Members can use their skills and increase their engagement by becoming thinkers, talkers, and taskers.
Thinkers can be involved to help TMEA envision new and innovative ways to achieve our goals, improve our activities, and develop our advocacy efforts. Thinkers can serve on committees that review our policies, programs, engagement, student access, and mission calibration.
Every music educator needs to be a Talker! Talkers share how critical music education is in a well-rounded education. Talkers are actively engaged in sharing success stories with the community and stakeholders. Ultimately, talkers help tell our story in a way that brings TMEA’s mission to the fore and creates a viral effect in educating others about the life-changing experiences that happen when students are part of music programs.
Taskers can help TMEA execute its mission by creating content to support current and future teachers at our annual convention, volunteering at the convention in a leadership role, or helping to execute activities at the Region, Area, and State levels. Taskers are the doers who allow our mission to impact the lives of our students, teachers, and stakeholders.
All advancement in TMEA’s mission comes from the collaborative effort of our membership, leadership, staff, and stakeholders using our combined passion to serve students and music education.
What do you believe TMEA has done well in its history?
TMEA has always provided outstanding programs for students and teachers. Our annual convention is renowned worldwide for the quality of professional development, outstanding performances by representatives from each of our five divisions, and the life-changing experiences through our All-State ensembles. These are just a few of the cornerstones of TMEA’s legacy of success.
In what ways could TMEA serve its members and Texas music students more meaningfully?
TMEA can engage our College Division to help provide Texasbased research to collect data that would support legislative efforts to improve access and funding for the fine arts. TMEA can continue to seek opportunities to showcase high-quality music
Influential Music Educators
I grew up in Spring, in an added-on mobile home, and my band director Mr. Cumpian would come down our dirt driveway and pick me up for sectionals (I don’t recommend this today, but that was a different time). I never felt judged for being of modest means—only valued as a student in his non-varsity band. He gave me a ride because my parents had to leave early for work, and that was the only way I could get to the before-school rehearsals. Mr. Cumpian’s care and compassion cultivated a love for music and a student-focused approach to music education that still serves me today. As a result of his investment in me, I knew in the seventh grade that I wanted to be a band director.
My high school band directors, college professors, and mentors like Eddie Green, Noe Marmolejo, Richard Crain, George Parks, Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser, and Tom Bennett influenced my philosophical development. They modeled process-driven instruction, student-focused teaching, setting high expectations for oneself and students, and music for music’s sake. Because of their influence, these characteristics were part of the teacher I would become. While in the classroom or as a fine arts administrator, I always worked to pay it forward to those who invested so much in me.
education happening across our state in all demographics, levels, and classifications, regardless of socioeconomic circumstances.
What do you hope TMEA never stops doing?
I hope TMEA always provides pathways for students to have positive musical experiences that help them find a safe place of acceptance. I also hope TMEA remains part of the collaborative process that promotes innovation in pedagogy and best practices in music education. Finally, I hope TMEA continues adapting to meet the needs of an ever-changing landscape for our teachers, our students, and the music industry.
What advice do you have for current and future music educators as they begin this new school year?
Never underestimate your importance in the education and experiences of a child. Your students are empowered to cultivate their future in a positive environment that provides a safe place for them to experience personal and educational growth. The daily activities in your classroom consistently model a collaborative culture that imprints the importance of giving of oneself for the betterment of a group. In turn, this can be the firm foundation for their success and lifelong appreciation for music.
Whether you have ideas to share, questions to ask, or simply want to welcome him, I encourage you to contact Joe. As you have read, he is deeply committed to supporting our members and ensuring your voices are heard.
Karen Cross is TMEA Communications Manager and Managing Editor of southwestern.musician.
BAND DIVISION
MIKE HOWARD, STATE VICE-PRESIDENT
Early fall is the time when we need to focus on developing systems and processes within our program that build strong individual players.
Let’s Get Started
It is fall in Texas! While it might still feel like summer outside, it is certainly the time when band directors are well into the beginning stages of preparing an ensemble for public performance. Whether you are starting preparation for a fall band concert, that first jazz band gig, or an upcoming marching contest, there are important teaching philosophies that can help move everyone in the right direction. Let’s get started!
FOCUS ON THE INDIVIDUAL PLAYER
As band directors, we can tend to lean heavily on the approach of ensemble first, individual performance second. After all, what ends up being adjudicated and evaluated at UIL fall and spring events? The ensemble.
As we strive to develop a high-quality ensemble, I encourage us to follow the mantra that great ensembles are created only by developing great individual players. Early fall is the time when we need to focus on developing systems and processes within our program that build strong individual players. Of course, we want our ensemble’s Concert F long tone to sound great, but now is the time to ensure our individuals are being challenged and evaluated. Whether you are focusing on the preparation of Region audition etudes, listening to individuals play their ensemble parts, or slowly ensuring that every beginning trumpet embouchure is appropriately formed, take the time to assess the individual.
In Memoriam
Chad Dempsey 1975–2024
Larry Alan Harris 1943–2024
check www.tmea .org for updates
September—Renew membership, purchase liability insurance, register for the convention.
September 1—All-State etude errata submission deadline.
October 3—TMEA convention housing reservation system opens online.
November 1—TMEA scholarship online application deadline.
January 11—Area Band auditions.
January 16—TMEA convention early registration deadline.
February 12–15—TMEA Clinic/Convention in San Antonio.
We sometimes neglect this priority because of the time it takes to give feedback and assess the individual players within the program. Please understand that I am
not advocating for putting more on your plate. I believe, however, that sacrificing some ensemble time to focus on individual players is worth it and will benefit the
Rental Repair
TMEA Clinic/Convention BAND DIVISION
68 Band Division Clinics & Concerts
Kevin Sedatole
Featured Clinician
Learn more at tmea.org/clinicians
Band Division Program Spotlights
Featuring clinic presentations by these programs:
• Lamar Middle School (Laredo ISD)
San Juanita Rodriguez, Director
• Oak Ridge High School (Conroe ISD)
Jerriald Dillard, Director
• Yoe High School (Cameron ISD)
Jon Schriver, Director
ensemble in the end! (Be sure to read this month’s Sound Ideas installment written by Bryn Roberts on page 18. She offers a great strategy for utilizing Region Band audition music for this very purpose.)
IT’S A MARATHON, NOT A SPRINT
In a time when instant gratification is woven through the fabric of our lives, for students and teachers alike, it’s difficult to embrace the gradual, incremental progress that is essential to developing individual musicianship. However, we must continually remind ourselves and our students that it’s a process. The daily goals for yourself and your students should not hinge on the completion of a project but on growth toward that completion. It’s all about getting better—every day.
Think of that freshman marcher learning to backward march for the first time. It’s a stressful situation because they will perform in public just a few weeks after taking their first step! Even if you had unlimited hours to prepare this student, they still might not get it in time for that performance, and we need to be okay with that. We must recognize that the real celebration is about the student gradually improving each time they step onto the field.
As teachers, regardless of a student’s skill level, it is our role to celebrate growth, encourage resilience, and convince them to keep trying even when improvement is slow and steady. Do not expect students to sprint the first five miles of this marathon that is ensemble preparation. We must help them understand the pace that will get them where they need to go, and we must prepare ourselves to be their biggest encourager when they hit that wall that is inevitable in a long, arduous journey.
DAILY REHEARSAL EXPERIENCE = OUR ENSEMBLE CULTURE
We are all building toward some performance experience as we work with our ensembles each day. This may be a concert, marching band contest, parade, or pep rally. Regardless, do not rely on the culminating performance experience to be what defines your students experience. Whether it’s a beginning band concert or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, one performance will never be the deciding factor for how positively your students feel about their experience. The deciding factor is where they will spend 90% of their band lives—in rehearsal.
While we all work to plan memorable performances for our students, make the most memorable part of your program the time within the walls of your band hall. Part of this process is to put yourself in your students’ shoes, asking what it feels like to be part of your class and what you would be looking forward to experiencing tomorrow. The culture and environment of your rehearsal is the culture of your band program. (For more on this topic of program culture, read the article by Jim Shaw and Andy Easton on page 34.)
POSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS AND HIGH EXPECTATIONS
So much of what we do revolves around establishing positive relationships: creating a safe space for all to be accepted, establishing student buy-in, ensuring a positive rehearsal culture, and more. That said, we must pair establishing positive relationships with setting high expectations for our students. I expect you would agree that as students, our best teachers had three things in common: they cared about us, they were passionate about the subject they taught, and they were not easy on us—they had high expectations.
Believing our students are capable of amazing things and supporting their journey to realize them will yield incredible experiences for the student and the teacher. My favorite Eddie Green quote is, “Children can do anything they are taught to do. They don’t know that something is difficult unless an adult tells them that it is. The limitations on what kids can accomplish is determined by the limitations of the abilities of the adults who teach them.” As teachers, we should love them and push them, every day.
To sum it all up: build the individual, know that excellence takes time, cultivate culture daily, and always blend positive relationships with high expectations. I hope these four ideas will serve you well and be a source of strength as you complete the ensemble-development marathon with your students.
HONOR BANDS, INVITED ENSEMBLES, AND PROGRAM SPOTLIGHTS
Our thanks and congratulations go to all Band Division members who applied for their programs to be featured at our 2025
Clinic/Convention. Your dedication to musical excellence has a profound impact on your students and the band community throughout the state. I would also like to offer gratitude to all the fantastic music educators who served as audition chairs,
adjudicators, playback operators, and selection committee members as part of these selection processes.
See below for a list of our 2025 Honor Bands and finalists. In the coming months, I’ll share more about our Honor and Invited ensembles. For a complete list of concert ensembles, go to www.tmea.org/2025concerts. I hope you are all looking forward to their outstanding performances in February!
CLINIC/CONVENTION UPDATE
If you haven’t yet renewed, you can reg-
ister at the same time. Otherwise, return to your record now and register to attend our amazing annual event, which will be February 12–15 in San Antonio! In addition to the list of ensembles mentioned above, go to www.tmea.org/2025clinics to review a list of all clinics that will be scheduled. The schedule and full details will be included in the December magazine.
Housing note: Hotel reservations begin Thursday, October 3. Earlier that week, an email from TMEA will include updated and important instructions for accessing the reservation system. Follow those
instructions to ensure you can access the reservation system and have the most reliable experience possible. Until then, go to www.tmea.org/hotelrates for a preview of convention hotels. Be aware of hotel reservation scams. Members and exhibitors consistently receive emails and calls regarding housing from external sources. None of these are official. 0
Mike Howard is the Director of Fine Arts, Music, and Performing Arts at Leander ISD. bandvp@tmea.org
Congratulations, Honor Bands and Finalists
Join TMEA in congratulating the directors and students of the following outstanding programs!
7 Seabrook Int/Clear Creek ISD ........................... Austin Tran
8 Shadow Ridge MS/Lewisville ISD Ross Patterson
9 Dawson MS/Carroll ISD Chase Howard
10 Deerpark MS/Round Rock ISD .......... Nicole Correa-Kemp
SOUND IDEAS
BAND: UTILIZING REGION MUSIC FOR INDIVIDUAL GROWTH
By Bryn Roberts
Some educators view the TMEA Region/All-State audition music as solely intended for their top students preparing to audition, when, in fact, the process of working on this music can be critical to all students’ development. In my experience, the systematic learning and assessing of this music throughout the fall semester is the best tool for developing individual musicians.
From early September through Thanksgiving, our high school students perform prescribed cuts from the Region music for a band director during class. We utilize a rubric to grade students and give them unlimited reassessment opportunities. Assessments happen about once a week, with students working through nine cuts designed to help them prepare for Region auditions and inhouse band placement auditions.
Every student in the program participates, each choosing the level/ track at which they will participate—Gold, Silver, or Bronze. The fact that all students participate reinforces the idea that they are in this together, working toward the same goals, regardless of whether they are in the top band or the fourth band. Offering them the track choice helps students feel invested and in control of their destiny, and we find they do a remarkably good job of selecting the appropriate track for their current skill set.
On the Gold track, students learn all the audition music, with the idea that this will prepare them for Region auditions if they choose. Each year, our TMEA Region selects cuts from the AllState audition music for ninth graders to utilize in auditioning for a freshman Region Band. These cuts represent approximately half of the All-State music. We use these freshman cuts for our Silver track. We offer this track to any students, not just freshmen. Upperclassmen understand that if they select this track, they will not be eligible to audition for Region Band. Finally, we offer a Bronze track for students for whom the Region music is not yet developmentally appropriate. In selecting this music, we tailor it to the needs and abilities of each student. It can be anything from middle school Region etudes to lines from a beginner method book.
A couple of years ago, we realized we weren’t meeting the needs of our students who were aiming to advance to Area auditions and possibly qualify for All-State. We simply weren’t hearing enough
Go to www.tmea.org/roberts2024 or scan this code for resources and the rubric mentioned in this article.
of the music later in the process of preparing for auditions and weren’t giving them timely feedback as they were perfecting the etudes. So, last year we added a Platinum track through which students learn the music at an accelerated rate and play larger chunks of the music as well as surprise cuts closer to the Region audition.
For students who select the Silver or Bronze tracks, we build in additional scaffolding to assist them in learning the music. There is more time for learning because there is less music to perform. Depending on the needs of the program and the student, we alternate between having them count a cut one week and playing it the following. We use other scaffolding strategies as well, such as initially having them say note names, play every note as a quarter note, or perform the music at half tempo.
Ideally, on assessment days one director leads the class while other directors hear individual students play their Region music. However, sometimes staffing does not make this possible. In this case, students can engage in individual practice time or student-led performances of the Region music for each other, while all available directors are listening to individual assessments. The success of this unsupervised class time clearly depends on the maturity of the students. While it’s not as effective as hearing a student live, you can accomplish these assessments through recordings.
This systematic process of learning Region music can work in any program! Tailor it to fit the needs of your students. Start where they are and grow from there. Make the individual playing times a positive experience, with consistent encouragement at the start. You will find these assessments become valuable opportunities for building relationships.
Be patient, it can take several years of consistently implementing these playing times to see the results in your program. This process can become a positive part of your program’s culture as students enjoy the challenge, the opportunity to show off their hard work, and the ability to recognize their musical progress over time. 0
Bryn Roberts is Director of Bands at Emerson HS (Frisco ISD).
AUDITION DATES
NOVEMBER 3, 2024
FEBRUARY 1, 2025
MARCH 1-2, 2025
@uhkgm_arts
@uhmooresschool
uh.edu/kgmca/music
ADVOCACY Education • Translation • Value
BY ERIC BRANSCOME
Music education historians know this story well—in 1832 a team of singing school teachers led by Lowell Mason proposed to the Boston school board that they add music to the school curriculum, funded by taxpayer dollars. After a few failed attempts, the school board eventually approved it in 1838, and the art of music education advocacy was born.
Although we learn that story as an endpoint, their proposal was more of a starting point for advocacy efforts that continue today. While we’d like to think there is a universal understanding of and support for the value of music education, we know that is not always the case. Nearly 200 years after Mason and his colleagues presented to the Boston school board, we often find ourselves engaged in similar conversations.
Over the years we have learned that certain advocacy strategies work well while others do not—particularly when highlighting the similarities and differences between music and other subjects in the school. Examining advocacy through the lens of education and translation, we can consider appropriate times and ways to say that music is different.
ADVOCACY IS EDUCATION
Advocacy is an act of education. Through our advocacy efforts, we teach those around us about music. We teach them about the resources we need to be effective, the value of music, and the impact it has on the lives of our students. As such, we can apply the process of education to advocacy efforts.
It’s Ongoing and Continual: Thinking about education, we know that we cannot teach a new concept once and expect it to stick. It must be practiced, refined, assessed, retaught, and applied on an ongoing basis. We know from the very title of publications such as Bruner’s The Process of Education that education is, in fact, a process.
Similarly, advocacy is a continual and ongoing process. Students come to us to learn and gain new experiences. We educate them
through a carefully planned and practiced process. As applied to advocacy, we will encounter people who have not been taught about the value of music or music education. We cannot present one speech, cite one statistic, or write one report and expect them to remember. Also, our audience constantly changes, with people moving in and out of our circle of influence. New members may not have been exposed to, believe in, or understand why music is critical to student success. Thankfully, we can educate them all if we apply the same ongoing and continual mindset to advocacy that we apply to effective teaching.
It’s Multimodal: If advocacy is education, and if education is multimodal, advocacy must also be multimodal; an advocacy campaign that deeply influences one audience may be meaningless to another. A left-brained, mathematical, or data-driven administrator may not respond to a narrative detailing the meaningful experiences students receive through music and the arts. In contrast, an emotion-driven administrator may not care too much about graphs or data showing music students’ graduation rates.
Again, we must take what we know of education and apply it to advocacy. We may look to Myers-Briggs to explore how our administrators may perceive our programs or think (or feel) about music courses. We may analyze our administrator through the lens of Jerome Bruner to determine if a visualization or graphic may help our case or if our audience is more auditory in the way they receive information. In short, we must know our audience and explore the multimodal ways in which we present information in our advocacy efforts.
It Requires Trial and Error: Since advocacy is education, and education is multimodal, advocacy may sometimes feel like a trialand-error experiment. In our first conversations with a new audience, we may not yet know what moves or motivates our listeners. We may not yet know how to communicate or speak to their values. In our initial conversations, we may make some missteps or speak in terms that do not resonate with them. But just as we work to understand each of our students and how to reach and teach
them, we must work through the initially awkward conversations as we learn about our audience and discover how to deliver our message in terms they comprehend.
What You Can Do: It is easier to teach something accurately the first time than it is to reteach something that a student learned incorrectly. Similarly, proactive advocacy is much more effective than reactive advocacy:
• Become proactively involved in your campus community. Attend and actively engage in faculty or committee meetings. Request one-on-one meetings with your administrator, particularly when there is an administrative change or when you start working at a different campus. In short, be engaged in the process of impactful decision-making on your campus.
• Whenever you have an audience of parents (at concerts and organizational meetings), take a few moments to teach and reteach your audience about the multiple benefits of music.
• Some parents and administrators are unaware of the legal and formal
definitions of music as a curriculum requirement. Teach them about the inclusion of music as part of the wellrounded education defined in the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (2015). Teach them that your content area has TEKS objectives you are required to cover in your class. Teach them that, in addition to your content area, music is covered in TEKS in math, science, social studies, and other areas.
ADVOCACY IS TRANSLATION
When communicating with someone who speaks a different language, have you ever slowed your speech, over-enunciated, or even raised your voice in a vain effort to gain understanding? At some point, you realize these tactics are futile. Applying this to our work, music is not the different language; the pedagogy of music is.
The pedagogy of music is unique, setting it apart from other subjects in the school, and making it difficult for a non-musician to understand. As such, it becomes our role to translate what we do as music educators into terms a non-musician administrator can understand.
We can take strides to help our administrators understand the complexities of music education. More importantly, however, we learn to speak their language so we can translate our content into their vocabulary and thereby meet their needs. In effect, we utilize Steven Covey’s habit, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” In doing so, we learn what our administrators want or need. We learn what they value. We then translate music education into the wants, needs, and values of our supervisors, helping them understand what we do and how music meets their needs.
What You Can Do: Use your annual evaluation and observation as a time to educate your administrator about what you do and how it relates to other content areas. Consider the following and how you could offer these ideas to your administrator to help them understand the language of music pedagogy:
• The concert is the product; the rehearsal is the process. Sometimes an administrator will not observe the music teacher for an annual evaluation, applying the logic that they came to the concert and the
Dr. John Cody Birdwell Director of Bands University of Kentucky THE DIVISION OF MUSIC AT TEXAS WOMAN'S UNIVERSITY PRESENTS TWO UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES FOR BAND STUDENTS:
Friday and Saturday, Nov. 22-23, 2024
All-State Masterclasses (TMEA & ATSSB) Honor Band Rehearsals Festival Concert
2023 Honor Band Clinician
Featured Performance
TWU Wind Symphony
Friday, November 22, 6 p.m. Margo Jones Performance Hall
Scan the QR code or visit twu.edu/music/camps-and-workshops
ensemble sounded great, so they’ll use that for the annual evaluation observation. Help your administrator understand that the rehearsal is the process—the actual teaching. An evaluation of teaching needs to be in the classroom, more so than on the concert stage.
• Your “bell-ringer” won’t be a worksheet that might be expected in other classrooms. Prior to rehearsal, students get out their instruments (band or orchestra), put their music in rehearsal order, and begin warming up on specific techniques (scales, vocalise, long tones, rudiments, breathing, stretching, etc.). Through these activities, they are engaged in active music-learning.
• Your assessments are not always on paper. They includes playoffs, singoffs, chair placements, audio and video submissions, and sometimes written evaluations of mastery of specific
content (theory, music literacy, etc.). When students sing or perform on their instruments, you are constantly performing diagnostic and formative evaluations as you evaluate from the podium to determine mastery of student learning.
• Your rehearsal guide is your lesson plan. Ensembles typically don’t do “guided practice followed by independent practice” and other components often included on traditional lesson plan templates. Instead, the common rehearsal guide templates prepare music educators for appropriate sequencing and pacing for music ensembles.
• Learning to sing is more than just singing. Learning to play an instrument is much more than just beating a drum or making a sound. Mastery of musical content requires the same academic rigor, process, and evaluation as other subjects, and then some.
Undergraduate and Graduate Scholarships
Complete all application requirements by November 1, 4:30 p.m. CT.
Last year, TMEA awarded $211,000 in scholarships to 74 students!
Graduating High School Seniors
• Bill Cormack Scholarship: $3,000/year for up to five years.
• Past-Presidents Memorial Scholarship: $2,500/year for up to five years.
• Past-Presidents Scholarship: $2,500/year for up to five years.
• Executive Board Scholarship: $2,500/year for up to five years.
• One-Year Scholarships: $2,500 for one year only (multiple awarded).
Undergraduate Music Education Students
Robert Floyd Scholarship for Music Education: $4,000/year for up to four years.
One-Year Scholarships: $2,500/one year (multiple awarded).
One-Semester Student Teaching Scholarships: $2,500 for students scheduled to student-teach during spring or fall semesters (multiple awarded).
Graduate Music Students
Graduate Study Scholarships: $1,250–$2,500 for studies during summer or fall 2025 semesters (multiple awarded).
ADVOCACY IS COMMUNICATING VALUE
Music educators strongly believe in the value of music, and we are compelled to convince others about its value. Naturally, we may not understand when people do not value music in the same way we do, value a different kind of music, or value music for reasons that conflict with our own.
For decades, we have heard a variety of claims that music makes children smarter But let’s take a step back and question the psychology, philosophy, and strategy behind this claim. Claiming that music makes children smarter, raises their IQ, or improves their performance in other academic subjects can yield unintended consequences. We can unintentionally create an environment where the primary purpose of music in the curriculum is to improve performance on standardized tests; if we do that, we must consider what happens if we’re wrong. If we value music education for that reason and if students don’t improve, we invalidate the purpose of music education and give administrators a stronger justification to reduce our resources or eliminate our programs.
In considering our values, we also need to explore the following response that might, on the surface, seem appropriate in varied situations, “Music is different; we don’t do that.” Yes, assessment, pedagogy, and so many other aspects of music are different from other curricular subjects. But the louder we beat the drum of difference, the more likely we are to hear an administrator respond that we don’t belong here. Instead, let us replace “We don’t do that” with “Here is how we can do that.” This communicates we are different (as we should be) and we can meet the educational goals of the institution. We show that we belong.
Moreover, there is a fundamental fallacy in the claim that music is different. The flaw in this logic is that music is supposed to be different. Its difference from other subjects is part of what gives it value in the curriculum. Math is different from English; English is different from Social Studies; Social Studies is different from Music. It’s all different. It’s supposed to be different. Ancient scholars wrote that a complete and well-rounded curriculum comprises the seven liberal arts, which includes music among the other subjects. The differentiation is what earned each content area its
rightful place among the liberal arts.
Looking more closely, perhaps the issue is not about claiming that music is different but more about how we interpret that difference. First, being different does not imply less than or unequal to. In the ancient definition of the seven liberal arts, each was considered equal; there was no hierarchy. Through this, we infer that no singular component is more or less critical than another (just as no individual puzzle piece has greater importance). They all contribute equally to the complete picture, or in this case, a complete and wellrounded education.
With that in mind, we return to the response, “We’re different. We don’t do that.” The danger in this response is that we portray music as so different that we cannot (or will not) do what the rest of our campus is doing. We risk the unintended consequence of teaching a non-musician administrator that we don’t belong. Continuing with the puzzle analogy, we teach those around us that music may be a piece of a puzzle, but we’re in the wrong box. We can prevent this and show how we
belong by responding instead with “Here’s what that looks like in my ensemble or classroom.” We translate music into the language of our administrators and seek to show how we meet their needs and achieve their goals.
What You Can Do: Particularly with your administrators, listen first and then talk. Listen through what your administrators say to decipher what they really mean and how or why they value music.
• How do they define success in other programs and how does that translate to music?
• Do they value process or product, meaningful experiences or successful outcomes?
When you speak, highlight the nonmusical, durable, and transferrable skills students learn during music activities. Durable skills last a lifetime and transferrable skills can be applied to multiple facets of life. These include but are not limited to tenacity, collaboration, leadership, creative problem-solving, and strategic thinking. Typically, non-musicians value
music for these durable and transferable skills as much as for developing artistry and musicianship.
Through multimodal advocacy strategies and continual and ongoing efforts, we educate people around us about music. We translate our content into terms that a non-musician audience can understand, and hopefully, value. We highlight that the difference between music and other content areas is an intentional component that earns each subject its rightful and equal place in the curriculum. Through our efforts, we empower those in the future who will look back upon our work, learn from what we say and do, and use that information to keep music alive and strong.
Dr. Eric Branscome is Professor of Music and Head of the School of Music at Texas A&M University-Commerce.
SOUND IDEAS
ORCHESTRA: ENCOURAGING STUDENT OWNERSHIP OF LEARNING
By Louanne Greer
Allowing students autonomy and control over their learning benefits teachers, students, and the orchestra program. I have worked for several years exploring ways to promote autonomy among middle school orchestra students. As orchestra teachers, we can provide resources, create leadership opportunities, and allow students some control over aspects of their learning. We create space for students to develop confidence, build self-esteem, and enhance their social and emotional development.
The palpable excitement of learning something new is so special, yet because we must be particular about setup, posture, and technique from the onset, learning to play an instrument can be a slow process. One way to foster excitement during this time is to have students lead stretches at the beginning of class. From almost the beginning of their first year, I also allow students to lead tuning and warmups.
As they acquire more technique and skills, our student leaders run the first part of the class, including our entire tuning and fingerpattern sequence. We periodically teach a brief conducting lesson and allow students to volunteer to conduct a piece of music or a line from the book of their choice. Speaking in front of your peers can be quite intimidating, and conducting allows them to practice that skill in a supportive and controlled environment.
Student jobs build leadership skills and make orchestra a place where they belong and have some control. Our administrators are impressed by how smoothly the students begin class without the teacher. Substitutes often want to return because each class knows what’s expected and how to have a successful rehearsal when we are away. As a bonus, student leadership shifts the identity of the program. It is not my class or my orchestra; it is our program, our classroom, our concert, and our learning. The emphasis is on the partnership between teacher and students. This small shift also contributes to higher recruiting and retention rates (but that is another article).
We can also promote student autonomy in several ways. As early as possible, they tune themselves. Using digital tuners and only the fine-tuners at first, they tune their open strings. It may take considerable time when they begin, but with support, students are soon able to unpack, tune, and be ready to begin rehearsal within the first few minutes of class. Tuning independently boosts their confidence and develops their ears. The teacher is then able to address other issues during that time, such as broken strings, discipline, or any number of administrative tasks.
By providing students the resources to learn to read music and
Go to www.tmea.org/greer2024 or scan this code for details and examples of student jobs that foster leadership and autonomy.
play a stringed instrument, we give them the tools to answer their own questions. I don’t directly answer questions about identifying a note or fingering. If a student asks that level of question, I guide them to locate the answer. Students help each other find answers and are more likely to retain the information they discover for themselves. For questions on articulations or bowings, I ask students what they think, and I encourage them to try different ways. Then I facilitate discussions about how to make appropriate stylistic choices. They internalize information about musicality and technique when they understand the rationale and have options from which to choose.
Autonomous student learning is paramount when teaching students how to practice. Without guidance, students inevitably play through their music on autopilot, reinforcing both correct and incorrect habits. We must explicitly teach practice skills during class. I allow 30 seconds to two minutes to practice a specific and short passage, with clear instructions about tempo, articulation, style, positions, etc. I observe their practice and address what worked and what did not, but most importantly, I point out why something worked. At the end of each rehearsal, we document specific goals. I allow students to create these goals by asking what we worked on during rehearsal and how we might apply it at home. We try to give them a manageable number of measures, remind them about bow placement and articulation, any intonation or rhythmic work, etc. We provide the framework for meaningful and efficient practice away from the teacher.
In orchestra class, we teach students to be independent thinkers, problem solvers, and team members through the lens of learning to play an instrument. We provide a safe and supportive environment for students to learn life skills and hopefully develop leadership and autonomy skills that will guide them throughout their entire lives. 0
Louanne Greer previously served as an Orchestra Director at Young JH (Arlington ISD) and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in music education at the University of North Texas.
MUSIC FOR BAND AND ORCHES TRA
About Echelon Music Press
Echelon Music was started in 2007 to bring accessible print music to music students, professional instrumentalists, community bands, orchestras, and fellow educators. I have been a composer for most of my life, a professional horn player, and retired from teaching band & choir after 38 years. I felt the need to share my music, and the music of other like-minded composers, with those who would dare to listen. Here at Echelon Music, we aim to produce music that is well written, playable, enjoyable, and hopefully speaks to those who perform and hear it. Leon Steward
titles are available through JW Pepper. You can search “Echelon Music Press” or by selecting any of
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS COLLEGE OF MUSIC WELCOMES NEW FACULTY
ORCHESTRA DIVISION
JENNIFER MARTIN, STATE VICE-PRESIDENT
The key is to support your high expectations with a spirit of flexibility, teaching heart, and growth mindset.
Supporting Student Achievement
There is something about a new school year that brings feelings of excitement and energy. Orchestra rooms are filled with freshly sharpened pencils, music to be passed out, and instruments ready and waiting to fill the room with music. From beginners starting their journey in orchestra or mariachi to the seniors kicking off their last year, the possibilities for the year are endless. You are about to be a dominant force in their lives this year! You are enough and have what it takes to lead your group to a great year!
The start of the year sets the tone for the culture and expectations of each of your ensembles. Setting up good routines and expectations now will pay off throughout the year. Don’t assume that students should know what to do—maybe they do and maybe they don’t. The start of the year is the easiest and most logical time to put these procedures and expectations into place. I’ve observed directors who got into trouble later in the year because they didn’t begin in this way. Take the time now to set those expectations.
SETTING AND SUPPORTING HIGH EXPECTATIONS
The culture and tone of the program is being established now. If you let things slide at the onset, they’ll become part of the group culture, influence the ensemble’s musical development, and undermine your
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
check www.tmea .org for updates
September—Renew membership, purchase liability insurance, register for the convention.
September 1—All-State etude errata submission deadline.
September 15— Honor Orchestra Part A online entry deadline for HS String.
October 3—TMEA convention housing reservation system opens online.
October 25— HS String Honor Orchestra Parts B & C and recordings deadline.
November 1—TMEA scholarship online application deadline.
November 1–2— HS String Honor Orchestra adjudication.
January 16—TMEA convention early registration deadline.
February 12–15—TMEA Clinic/Convention in San Antonio.
TEXAS LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MUSIC
Scholarships are available for both music and non-music majors. These awards are intended to provide recognition for scholarship and talent in the study of music.
SCHOLARSHIP AUDITION DATES:
Saturday, November 23, 2024 1 - 3 p.m.
Friday, February 21, 2025 1 - 3 p.m.
Saturday, March 29, 2025 1 - 3 p.m.
Saturday, April 12, 2025 1 - 3 p.m.
Individual audition dates may be requested if necessary.
For specific qualifications for each award, visit www.tlu.edu/music-scholarships.
classroom management. Don’t be afraid to unapologetically establish high expectations from the start.
Students deserve a director who leads them to their best and holds them to high expectations It can be easy to shy away from this, fearing that we will create a culture of perfectionism. The key is to support your high expectations with a spirit of flexibility, teaching heart, and growth mindset. Find creative ways to teach and reinforce the social and musical skills needed at any given moment.
The experiences we create would be dry and lifeless if they were all about strong routines and expectations. We must remember that relationships are key. They are essential to your students’ growth as young humans and musicians, foundational to a healthy culture in your program, and critical to the success of your recruiting and retention. All the expectations and routines in the world will fall flat without healthy relationships in place. Students need to know you care about them as people and they must trust you before they buy into everything you ask of
them. When they have trust and respect, they will go to the ends of the earth to meet your expectations! At the start of the year, make it a priority to foster healthy and positive relationships with your students and to support them in their relationships with each other.
INSPIRING STUDENTS
How do you inspire your students? This question would have intimidated me as an early-career teacher because I didn’t think of myself as one who could deliver an award-winning speech to my groups. I wished I could be like some of my mentors who were always able to deliver moviemoment speeches during rehearsals. However, I’ve learned over the years that inspiring students looks different for different people. It has more to do with being yourself and letting yourself, your love of music, and your love of the program shine through authentically. As I developed confidence as an orchestra director and learned how to feed my students’ musical and social-emotional needs, my influence ran deep in ways I never thought possible. Invest in and trust the process!
TMEA Clinic/Convention ORCHESTRA DIVISION
44 Orchestra Division Clinics & Concerts
Charles Laux
Featured Clinician
Learn more at tmea.org/clinicians
Orchestra Division Program Spotlights
Featuring clinic presentations by these programs:
• Richardson West Junior High (Richardson ISD)
Angela Sledge, Director
• The Woodlands High School (Conroe ISD)
Aaron Michaelson and Christian Ponce, Directors
CLINIC/CONVENTION UPDATE
Make sure that you have our convention dates of February 12–15 on your calendar and are making plans to attend. Learn more and register now at www.tmea.org/ register. The 2025 Orchestra Division featured clinician is Charles Laux, Director of Orchestras at Lassiter HS in the Cobb County School District in Marietta, Georgia, and host of the well-known Orchestra Teacher Podcast. His sessions will equip you with a wealth of knowledge and leave you fired up to bring those tools back to your students!
As I wrote this column, the clinic selection process was underway. With many high-quality submissions, the downside is that we cannot accept every proposal. The upside is that a wonderfully diverse session offering will be in store for you! When you receive this, a preview of the selected clinics will be available for your review at www.tmea.org/2025clinics. The schedule and details of these clinics will be included in the December magazine.
Looking forward to our convention, which is just over five months away, I hope you will take a few minutes to register as a volunteer. There are so many needs for the convention and other state-level events! Go to www.tmea.org/volunteer to register today. Our annual convention would not function or be affordable without the willingness of TMEA members to offer some of their time. Thank you in advance!
Housing note: Hotel reservations begin Thursday, October 3. Earlier that week, an email from TMEA will include updated and important instructions for accessing the reservation system. Follow those instructions to ensure you can access the reservation system and have the most
TMEA Member Directory
The TMEA directory requires a member login to view. Help TMEA members connect with you by including the information of your choice in the online directory.
Log in and go to Security & privacy settings to update your selections: https://my.tmea.org/update
reliable experience possible. Until then, go to www.tmea.org/hotelrates for a preview of convention hotels. Be aware of hotel reservation scams. Members and exhibitors consistently receive emails and calls regarding housing from external sources. None of these are official.
HONOR ORCHESTRAS, INVITED ENSEMBLES, AND SPOTLIGHTS
Congratulations go to this year’s Honor Orchestras and finalists, Invited Orchestras and HS Mariachi, and our Orchestra
Division Invited Program Spotlights! The quality of technique and artistry by the orchestras was amazing; rising to the top of such a great group is a huge accomplishment! These concerts and clinics will be a highlight of the convention.
See below for a list of Honor Orchestras and finalists and look to future issues to learn more about the Honor Orchestras, Invited Orchestras, and Invited HS Mariachi. For a complete list of concert ensembles, go to www.tmea.org/2025concerts.
HS STRING HONOR ORCHESTRA
Note that this year’s deadline for High School String Honor Orchestra Parts B & C is later than in the past. Part A is due September 15, and Parts B & C are due October 25. The contest will be adjudicated November 1–2. Our best to all who will enter this contest! 0
Jennifer Martin is the Orchestra/ Mariachi Specialist at Fort Worth ISD. orchestravp@tmea.org
Congratulations, Honor Orchestras and Finalists
High School Full
Middle School/Junior High Full
Middle School/Junior High String
High School String Honor Orchestra finalists and winners will be included in the January issue.
Establishing a Positive Program Culture
Through an organized and unified approach that is student-centered, a team of directors can create a culture that enhances the quality of their program and the lives of their students.
By Jim Shaw and Andy Easton
One of the defining characteristics of a successful music program and feeder pattern is an atmosphere that fosters high expectations and a love and appreciation of music and music-making. Creating and maintaining this culture for the duration of your students’ time in the program requires purpose and consistency at all levels.
While culture has multiple meanings, we will focus on how we have developed our culture through how we approach our program and the atmosphere we hope to create in our classrooms and rehearsal halls, on practice fields, and in performance. We will also view culture through the lens of the beliefs we hold and hope to foster in our students while they are in our programs and beyond. Whether you are a band, orchestra, or choir director, the concepts we offer here apply—establishing a positive program culture is essential for us all
Behind every decision we make and every procedure and policy we enact is the simple tenet we teach kids through music. We want to help our students become well-rounded and productive members of society, unlock their full potential as musicians and performers, and empower them to exhibit the highest level of performance at every opportunity.
We believe students grow when they are having fun and building personal relationships with those around them. To that end, we strive to create a family atmosphere in all activities and work to ensure our members become lifelong participants, supporters, and enjoyers of music.
STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
Just as it is in other classrooms, student engagement drives everything we do. Students must be engaged cognitively, behaviorally, and emotionally. We support this in our classes by establishing clear expectations, effective pacing, consistent communication, and a supportive environment.
EXPECTATIONS
After the height of the pandemic and our return to in-person instruction, it was abundantly clear that good behavior is learned; it must be taught and reinforced intentionally. Tom Bennett’s Running the Room: A Teacher’s Guide to Behavior shares the idea that every student comes to the classroom with varied skills, habits, and expectations of what to do. There is no benefit in simply telling a student to behave; you must teach it. Bennett goes on to state that behavior is a curriculum. This simple truth is the beginning of creating a classroom culture in which everyone flourishes—students and teachers.
Expectations are often created and reinforced through discipline. While the word discipline can often have negative connotations associated with consequences for poor behavior, we choose to view discipline as the practice of training a group to meet expectations using reinforcement and redirection to correct undesired behaviors
PROACTIVE DISCIPLINE
Clear rules and procedures will help you establish your desired classroom atmosphere. Rules are often posted somewhere in the room because that’s typically required. Rules should be brief and
general, avoiding overly specific requirements that limit an educator’s flexibility. Here are a few examples:
• Be respectful to everyone and everything.
• Support everyone’s ability to learn.
• Support your directors’ ability to teach.
• Be on time with the right materials and attitude.
Procedures can be viewed as how we do things in this classroom. They are more specific and should be taught as needed, not all at once. Beginner programs often need many procedures to guide students in the early days of their development. A teacher must establish clear priorities before the school year starts and be firm in their expectations, aiming to transform procedures into habits.
When implementing procedures, don’t be afraid to spend time early to save time later. Practice procedures often to make them permanent, praising students who model them correctly and calling attention to and redirecting those who don’t.
REACTIVE DISCIPLINE
How we respond to undesired behaviors in our classrooms and rehearsals greatly influences student engagement, classroom atmosphere, and more. Nothing will turn a student or a group of students off more quickly than a poorly handled disciplinary situation (or one that goes unaddressed).
While we have all been told not to sweat the small stuff, when it comes to unwanted behaviors happening in a classroom or rehearsal, nothing is small. If we allow talking, off-task or distracting behavior, etc., we are tacitly permitting these to continue.
Be sure to address the behavior, not the student. Avoid making interactions personal or, more importantly, taking student behavior personally. Monitor your tone so you do not sound like you are nagging your students or group. (“John and Michael, please stop talking,” instead of, “I can’t believe you are talking in the middle of my rehearsal again! Why do you keep doing this to me?”). Helping students understand the reasons for the expectation will almost always lead to greater buy-in.
Keep in mind that corrections don’t always need to be verbal. A simple motion of the hand or facial expression is often sufficient, and physical proximity works wonders when it comes to student behavior. Moving around the room mitigates a multitude of issues, so make a point of getting off the podium during rehearsals. Utilizing these nonverbal strategies will help your words carry more weight when a verbal correction is needed.
The need for reactive discipline responses and consequences should diminish over time. If not, then we need to evaluate more effective approaches to elicit our desired student outcomes. Regarding consequences, consider first the student’s needs and what is best for them, followed by those of the program, and, finally, the staff member. The result may be that not all students receive the same consequences, but expectations should remain consistent.
PACING AND COMMUNICATION
The effective pacing of a music class or rehearsal can be a difficult skill to learn and is developed with years of experience on the job. Regardless, there are some key
Texas Association for Symphony Orchestras
Piano
Jani Parsons
University of Calgary, School for Creative and Performing Arts
Strings
Renee Jolles
University of Rochester, Eastman School of Music
Prizes
Winds-Brass
Mark Ostoich
University of Cincinnati, Conservatory of Music
Entry Deadline: October 31, 2024 Information: www.tasovolunteers.com
Entries are accepted On-Line Only.
concepts to consider:
• Create a plan that establishes clear learning goals and anticipates and offers solutions for potential issues.
• Keep students involved by delivering information in multiple ways, asking questions, and creating as much interaction (verbal or musical) as possible.
• Observe students to recognize when a lesson or portion of the rehearsal has reached a point of diminishing return and pivot to something else (then rethink an approach and revisit the material in the future).
• When you stop, keep comments brief. Focus on one or two issues and offer solutions.
• Try to end each rehearsal with everyone playing. Share with students what got better that day and create anticipation for what comes next.
When leading a class or rehearsal, we must keep in mind that the students’ energy levels will never exceed ours. The unfortunate exception to this is when a teacher conveys negative energy. We as instructors must model the energy level we want to see from our students, even in moments when it might not be genuine.
As you address your students, be aware of non-talking noise in the room that could steal their attention. Vary your tone and strive to make eye contact with each ensemble member at least once in every rehearsal. Encourage students to be active listeners while also taking advantage of the wonderful nonverbal communication tool at your disposal—conducting!
ATMOSPHERE
Directors must intentionally create an environment in which our students feel safe to take risks. We can begin to do this by praising effort as much as or more than success. We should never criticize a student who is trying, regardless of whether they’re succeeding. In rehearsals, directors can often feel like they are playing a game of Whac-A-Mole, as they attempt to eradicate every issue. Like its effectiveness for pacing, when we concentrate on just one or two areas of concern at a time, we create a more positive environment for learning.
Monitor your reactions: Not every mistake is a disaster, none is made on purpose, and all are learning opportunities. Give value
and recognition to everyone involved in the rehearsal, including fellow staff members, team teachers, private lesson staff, clinicians, mentors, and students.
Have fun with your students and let them see that you enjoy what you are doing. Keep this in mind by often asking yourself whether you would be enjoying your class if you were a student in it.
PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE
Students’ beginning year is a critical time for establishing the culture and atmosphere you desire in your program. While students must understand procedures, even more importantly, they must feel successful from the start. Expectations and procedures should be consistent and built upon as members progress through the program. A high priority must be placed not only on student success but also on building strong relationships.
Involving all staff members at every level of the program and giving them the freedom to teach to their strengths creates consis-
tency and gives students a stronger sense of connection as they move from beginner through middle school and then to high school. Student leadership becomes more crucial as they move through the program, and the music we program is a critical factor when it comes to student engagement and connection. Your students’ parents are also key contributors to a healthy program and positive culture. Keep them involved and communicate with them often.
Through an organized and unified approach that is student-centered, a team of directors can create a culture that enhances the quality of their program and the lives of their students. 0
Jim Shaw is Assistant Director of Instrumental Music at The John Cooper School (The Woodlands).
Easton is the Director of
Help Students Envision a Future in Music Education
With over 1,200 members statewide, TFME campus and district chapters provide students who are interested in a music education career a network of support and information to help them be better prepared to pursue their passion. TFME Members:
• prepare for entry into college music programs
• provide service to their school music programs
• preview the benefits of association membership
In addition to a special TFME keynote address, members attend clinics and performances and peruse the exhibit hall at no cost. College Night offers a prime opportunity to connect with college & university music programs.
Andy
Bands at Tomball Memorial HS (Tomball ISD).
Create a Texas Future Music Educators Chapter!
VOCAL DIVISION
JOSHUA MCGUIRE, STATE VICE-PRESIDENT
Through service, you expose others in our profession to the very best of you, and in response, they will share with you the very best of them.
A New Year, An Evolving You
The arrival of a new school year is an exciting time for students and their families. It is also an exciting time for those of us in the classroom. I consider each fall as an opportunity to restart, similar to how many of us view the first of January as the time to refocus on health and other goals for the new calendar year. It is the chance for me to evaluate where my program is, as well as where I am personally in pursuing my short- and long-term goals.
With the assistance of the student leadership team, I look forward to the opportunity to brand our yearly goals for the program and set a sustainable tone to guide all in the choir program. Through this work, we set ourselves up to experience success by the end-of-year choir banquet.
For all choral directors, regardless of their age or years of experience, a new school year allows us to focus our resources, whether budgeted funds or time, to provide the best path forward to a rewarding year of making music with our students. Most important to me, the fall reset allows me to create a sustainable plan for my students and their families, as well as my well-being.
I believe I will always struggle to balance work with my personal life,
In Memoriam
Henry “Hank” Tharpe 1969–2024
MARK
YOUR CALENDAR
check www.tmea .org for updates
September—Renew membership, purchase liability insurance, register for the convention.
September 1—All-State etude errata submission deadline.
October 3—TMEA convention housing reservation system opens online.
November 1—TMEA scholarship online application deadline.
January 11—Area Vocal auditions.
January 16—TMEA convention early registration deadline.
February 12–15—TMEA Clinic/Convention in San Antonio.
probably even after I retire. Regardless, each year I make a plan to motivate my students, energize my community, and support my colleagues. By setting goals and boundaries, I can preserve what I need for my longevity, providing balance for my family and me. While I’m entering my third decade of teaching, setting these goals each year continues to be essential. Below are some goals for us all to consider this fall.
VOLUNTEER MORE
The best path to growth is through service. Your name won’t always be listed in a concert program, and you won’t always receive a ribbon to display on your name badge, but moving that music stand on and off stage is still impactful. Sharing your time, gifts, and talent allows you to build relationships. Through service, you expose others in our profession to the very best of you, and in response, they will share with you the very best of them.
A respected colleague recently shared an experience she had with her secondary choral team. This colleague said the directors who were service-oriented were thriv-
ing, while those who yearned for notice were struggling.
SET REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS
Setting a goal for your choir to perform at an ACDA national conference or a TMEA Clinic/Convention in six years is risky because the chances of that success are not guaranteed, even if you do everything right. If your goal is to teach students to be literate and create art that reflects their community and values, you have already made the first step to succeed over time.
In your big picture, decide what a successful choir program means to you. One rooted in awards and titles isn’t sustainable for most in this profession, and your students’ experiences will be sacrificed along that path.
EXPLORE AND EXPERIENCE
It is easy to use social media as the go-to when selecting literature, classroom management tips, and seeking professional advice. Social media certainly is a valuable resource for our profession. It also disregards one of the most important opportunities for teachers wishing to
evolve—experience. My early UIL evaluation results were not all Superior ratings. It was through my experience of failing and learning how to be better that I built my methods and provided best practices for the ensembles. Additionally, seeking out master teachers as mentors, watching them teach, and listening to their experiences allowed my brain to grow and evolve. Sometimes the app on our smartphone is convenient, but it is substandard to learning through exploring the path of experience.
FIND YOUR FIVE
I appreciate this sage advice from colleague Nicholas Likos at Katy HS: We can’t give our best day in and day out alone. While many are blessed with co-directors, the majority are not. Having a network of friends to share the ups and downs of our experiences is crucial to our longevity. Personally, I am fortunate to have an army of friends and colleagues supporting me each day as I aim to do the same for them in return. We don’t all have the same life experiences or backgrounds, and that’s what enriches our support of one another.
■
RELATIONSHIPS OUTSIDE THE CHOIR ROOM
Taking an important lesson from my undergraduate education classes, consider focusing on your relationships outside the choral rehearsal room this year. Do you make that daily trip to the main office for a chat with the administrative support staff or walk across the hall to visit with fellow fine arts teachers? High school directors—are you spending enough time at the middle school/junior high campus within your learning community? Conversely, for MS/JH directors, are you volunteering to listen to high school students as they sightread after school in preparation for Region Choir auditions? I need to remind myself yearly to get out of my silo and interact with others outside the choral rehearsal room.
This is going to be an exciting year for us all. As usual, we will face external distractions that have the potential to affect our day-to-day teaching, but each of us is equipped to give our best to our students. May we all set realistic goals that provide
longevity for success and sustainability for our students and community.
CLINIC/CONVENTION UPDATES
With just five months until our amazing annual convention, the TMEA staff and Executive Board are knee-deep in preparation. A preview of selected clinics is available at www.tmea.org/2025clinics, and the full convention schedule and details on these clinics will be included in the December magazine.
Housing note: Hotel reservations begin Thursday, October 3. Earlier that week, an email from TMEA will include updated and important instructions for accessing the reservation system. Follow those instructions to ensure you can access the reservation system and have the most reliable experience possible. Until then, go to www.tmea.org/hotelrates for a preview of convention hotels. Be aware of hotel reservation scams. Members and exhibitors consistently receive emails and calls regarding housing from external sources. None of these are official.
TMEA Clinic/Convention VOCAL DIVISION
2025 INVITED CHOIRS
Congratulations to the choral ensembles and their directors selected to perform during the 2025 TMEA Clinic/Convention. Much appreciation is extended to all who submitted. The standard and artistry in Texas choral education remain high. For a complete list of concert ensembles, go to www.tmea.org/2025concerts, and look to future issues of the magazine to learn more about our Invited Choirs.
PRESIDENT’S CONCERT: THE JASON MAX FERDINAND SINGERS
If you haven’t yet, be sure to purchase your tickets for the 2025 President’s Concert that will be on Wednesday at 8 p.m. in Lila Cockrell Theatre. If you already registered for the convention, go to www.tmea.org/ addon to learn how to add that purchase to your record. It’s going to be incredible to have the featured concert that kicks off our convention showcase this extraordinary choir. Learn more at www.tmea.org/ presidentsconcert.
VOLUNTEER TODAY
It is only through the service of Vocal Division volunteers that we can all enjoy the annual convention (and that it can remain affordable). There are many opportunities for members to share their gifts and time to make a difference. Please take a moment and register as a Vocal Division volunteer at www.tmea.org/volunteer. In addition to specific tasks for our division, TMEA needs volunteers to be the first faces at our convention, welcoming attendees in the registration area. Be sure to check that box when you volunteer.
ACDA NATIONAL CONFERENCE
We are excited for the opportunity to highlight the All-State Large School Mixed Choir members in this historic performance in Dallas on Saturday, March 22, 2025. This is only the second time TMEA has been invited to present an encore performance on the national stage for ACDA. I hope to see many of you in attendance as we celebrate choral art together! 0
Joshua McGuire is the Choir Director at Rock Hill HS (Prosper ISD).
vocalvp@tmea.org
SOUND IDEAS
VOCAL: BRIDGE THE GAP FROM ELEMENTARY TO MIDDLE SCHOOL
By Amanda Ransom
At the beginning of each school year, choir rooms are full of excitement, especially among our sixth-graders or anyone new to middle school/junior high choir. These students are not only new to the choir but also likely new to the campus. Some may have sung in their elementary schools, but this is middle school choir. As with any choir, we must achieve a balance between challenging our singers and setting them up for success. Over the years, I’ve found the literature that creates that balance fits into one of four categories: unison songs, rounds or canons, partner songs, and introductory two-part songs.
UNISON SONGS
A great place to start is to give all choirs—from beginners to advanced groups—at least one unison selection in the fall. For many of us, our beginner choirs are made up of students from different feeder schools. Giving them unison songs allows you to focus on tone, blend, and listening. Examples:
Song of the River arranged by Mark Patterson is a lovely arrangement of the poem Salley Gardens. There is ample opportunity to work on word stress, phrasing, and diction. The optional descant offers more challenge if the group needs it.
Manx Lullaby arranged by Lori-Anne Dolloff is a beautiful option in traditional Gaelic style. Phrasing will be your number one goal. The song has an optional part for a C instrument that adds to the rocking feel of the piece. This is a great example of a piece you may choose to teach by rote since it is more modal.
Solo books are a great resource for unison selections. Two I utilize are Solo Songs for the Developing Treble Voice and Solo Songs for the Male Changing Voice, both from BriLee Music.
ROUNDS/CANONS AND PARTNER SONGS
Canons are a great way to introduce two-part singing to beginners. As long as it’s a simple song, we can teach it to the entire choir and then split into groups to sing the round. Partner songs can also be taught to the entire choir and then split. In each case, regardless of their voice part, the singers are singing the main melody. These beginners are more likely to hold onto their part when the other section is singing something else. The key is not splitting parts and putting it all together too soon. Examples:
Jubilate Deo by Michael Praetorius arranged by Doreen Rao is a simple five-measure phrase that can be repeated and can be split into two, three, or four parts. Consider teaching this song to all your choirs on the first day of school. By the end of class, they
Go to www.tmea.org/ransom2024 or scan this code for an expanded list of literature to support new middle schoolers.
can walk out of the room having learned an entire song with the opportunity to sing in parts.
Lullaby Noel is a partner song based on The First Noel. The entire choir can learn both parts or just each section on their own. There are some challenging spots with cross-voicing but not so much that it is out of reach for newer singers.
INTRODUCTORY TWO-PART
In some programs, the sixth-grade choir will be able to handle some two-part selections at the beginning of the year and others may need to wait until spring. One of the most important factors to look for is a singable line, whether its melody or harmony. Examples:
“The Ghost Ship” from Reflections of a Lad at Sea arranged by Don Besig is a classic. The text is an exciting tale that moves along at a spirited tempo. There are opportunities to work on dynamics, learn some articulations, and experience a key change toward the end.
Olde Irish Aire by George L.O. Strid is a simple piece that is mostly unison but splits into two parts a few times. The song has a lot of melodic repetition even in the two-part sections. In this way, the unison sections allow the choir to regroup.
Dover Beach by Meredith Tompkins and Ashley Dame has quickly become a tried and true selection. It is available in multiple voicings. The TT voicing uses a limited range, making it a smart selection for choirs of unchanged voices.
Remember that while these singers may be new to middle school, that doesn’t mean they aren’t ready for a challenge, and that can come in a variety of ways, from part-singing, to learning to blend, and singing musically. The important thing is that your selections give them a sense of accomplishment and growth throughout the year.
Amanda Ransom is Head Choir Director at Henry Middle School (Leander ISD).
0
from the start
By Bob Duke
The naturalness of human expressivity
Children are inherently expressive, and throughout their life experiences they interpret the emotional messages they receive from others and in turn convey what they think and feel through sounds, gestures, and facial expressions. Children’s very first vocalizations are imbued with expressive inflection. Squeals of joy and cries of frustration appear in their expressive repertoire long before words do. Even days-old infants are capable of imitating many of the facial expressions of adult caregivers, and they soon learn the meanings of innumerable expressive sounds and gestures, including subtle variations in loudness, timing, duration, and patterns. As children develop, their innate predispositions combine with lived experiences to create a tremendous expressive capacity. Hearing a petulant two-year-old declare “I don’t want to” with perfectly timed inflection is but one illustration of how natural and intuitive expressive inflection can be. Children quickly recognize that the prosody of speech conveys meaning beyond words and syntax. In many ways, the inflections are as important a component of speech as the words themselves. So it is with music.
Most children have been hearing music since before they were born. They know a lot about music. Their many hours of passive listening have led to the development of musical expectations that are at the heart of musical expression. Of course, they don’t know what to call any of the phenomena they’ve been experiencing. They wouldn’t know a caesura from an accelerando, but they have very good intuitions about how music works and how music goes. This
implicit musical understanding can advantage their learning—if we allow it to do so.
Making the most of what children already know
Today’s parents of young children are probably familiar with socalled balance bikes or stride bikes—bicycles with no pedals— that are designed to introduce bicycle locomotion to beginners. Teaching kids to ride a bicycle by starting on a balance bike is wildly successful and in many ways superior to starting kids on regular pedal bikes with training wheels.1 What’s the essential feature of bicycles? Getting from place to place in a faster, more efficient, and more fun way than walking. What’s the hardest, and weirdest, thing about riding a pedal bike for the first time? Keeping your balance while your feet don’t touch the ground. Think about that. Before mounting a pedal bike for the first time, almost everything you did on land since you first learned to walk you did with your feet on the ground, and suddenly, your feet are resting on pedals in the air. Training wheels or not, it’s a weird sensation. A balance bike offers a different experience, one that embodies the essential features of biking—riding, steering, and balancing—and eliminates the hardest thing by allowing you to stand, walk, and run on your feet, which you’re already quite good at. This way of approaching a new skill is effective because it combines in the new experience with what novices already know.
“This is a Sublime Mouthpiece” –
Jim Kanter
The New Chedeville Kanter Cinema Model
Designed in collaboration with legendary studio musician and famed mouthpiece maker James Kanter, the new Chedeville Kanter
Cinema Clarinet model has a beautiful warm sound while being very flexible, and works very well for a variety of settings. It stands in the middle of tip openings and facing designs and appeals to more players than any other mouthpiece in the Chedeville range.
Life Without Limits
Jody Espina & Jim Kanter
Practicing challenging components of complex tasks in isolation is certainly a productive approach to learning, but the longer task components remain isolated, the more difficult it becomes to assemble the components into a coherent whole in the future.
Adding
complexity to skills with multiple components
It seems axiomatic that teaching something complicated to a learner demands that we break down the complicated goal into more manageable parts. But there are multiple ways of deconstructing a complex task, some that successfully maintain the essential features of the task itself while limiting the psychomotor demands of doing it and others that fail to retain the task’s essential features, thus making it harder to master the target skill in authentic circumstances in the future.
Many kids, like many adults, love the game of baseball. Eager parents who introduce their children to the game often begin by playing catch. Most kids also love to run, and soon after they can catch and throw a ball, it’s possible to put together the running, throwing, and catching and start playing baseball. What’s the hardest thing about playing baseball? Hitting a moving target with a stick. So, for very young children, we remove the hardest thing and put the ball on a tee at home plate. The batter hits the ball off the tee, all the while maintaining the essential features of baseball—hit the ball where opponents aren’t and then run to first base before a fielder can get the ball to the first baseman. It’s real baseball, right from the start. As kids gain experience and skill, we remove the tee and transition to “coach pitch,” because an experienced adult can throw the ball over the plate with a reliably consistent velocity. There’s now a moving target to hit with the bat, but because the adult is pretty good at throwing, it’s a predictable moving target. After gaining more experience, some players on the team learn to throw the ball over the plate and assume the role of pitcher; now the moving target is less predictable, and connecting with a pitch requires greater perceptual-motor control. Throughout all these experiences, the essential features of baseball are ever-present, and each stage of learning introduces increasing levels of task complexity.
How procedural memory works
Learning is a process of establishing and refining memories in the brain, and the formation and modification of all memories, including procedural memories (memories for how to do things, which many people refer to as “muscle memories”), require changes in the brain’s physical structure. Memories don’t reside in our brains
as disconnected bits of past experiences. All our memories are profusely interconnected with other memories, many of which are related to the contexts in which memories are acquired and refined. What’s more, the individual components of complex procedural memories are tightly interconnected. Learning to bat a baseball includes component memories related to your feet, your center of gravity, your focus of attention, and your past experiences with fast-approaching targets, all of which are connected to one another and all of which affect one another.
Memories for skills with multiple components are not like assemblages of Lego bricks, one for each component, that you can put together and take apart at will. For all of us who took class piano as undergraduates, we know how unpleasant that course would have been if we’d spent the first semester playing only right-hand melodies, the second semester playing only left-hand accompaniments, and only then tried to play hands-together. Seems absurd on its face. Why is that so obviously a bad idea? Because we recognize that playing one hand alone is not the same (at all) as playing with both hands together. Playing the right hand together with the left hand is a different right-hand memory from playing the right hand alone. This is not to say that practicing one hand of a piano piece is never useful. Of course it is. But if it’s not integrated relatively early with the movements of the other hand (and the pedal), trying to play hands-together will be made more difficult, not less.
Singing and playing music beautifully and expressively likewise combine multiple aspects of perceptual-motor control. Expressive inflection entails much more than merely playing soft when there’s a p and loud when there’s an f. Almost all the notes and phrases we sing and play have a shape to them, and those shapes convey expressive meaning. Regardless of whether you’re singing or playing an instrument, numerous components of perception and action need to operate together to produce beautiful, expressive music. Learning to play only inexpressively along with a metronome, for example, can actually inhibit the subsequent addition of expressive inflection, because playing or singing with expression is a different memory.
Many adjudication sheets make it appear as though the components of music performance are entirely separable (tone, intonation, dynamics, expression, etc.), but in human memory, they are not. Every time you sing or play while focusing only on note accuracy or rhythm while at the same time singing or playing out of tune or without expressive inflection, that lousy intonation or
flat expression becomes part of the note-and-rhythm-accuracy memory. You can’t just snap on the tone brick, or the intonation brick, or the expressive inflection brick later and expect the note and rhythm accuracy to remain just like they were before. You’ve got to create an entirely new memory that integrates all those components.
In music-making, expression isn’t the hardest thing. In fact, for most children, it’s the most intuitive thing. What’s the hardest thing about making music? Controlling your vocal apparatus or wrestling an instrument into submission. Although expressive inflection is not the hardest thing and is arguably the most important thing, expressive inflection is often left out to make the other stuff more doable.
Of course, if young musicians are trying to learn music whose technical demands are at the brink of their motor capacity, then thinking about expressive inflection is nearly impossible. But imagine instead providing many opportunities for young musicians to perform music that’s well within their technical capabilities while challenging them to make the music beautifully expressive (lovely tone, in tune, rhythmically spiffy, expressive shape).2 That kind of goal shifts the primary challenge away from merely getting the notes to speak and toward performing a beautiful rendition of whatever it is they’re playing or singing. Doing so limits the hardest thing—controlling your voice or your instrument— and maintains the essential feature of music-making: expressing ideas beautifully, confidently, and convincingly to listeners.
Practicing challenging components of complex tasks in isolation is certainly a productive approach to learning, but the longer task components remain isolated, the more difficult it becomes to assemble the components into a coherent whole in the future. When we organize instruction to make complex tasks more manageable for beginners, where do we direct learners’ attention at the outset, and what do we ignore? Given what’s known about how our brains establish and refine skill memories, we should make the most important component the focus of attention at the very beginning and throughout the course of study, especially when the most important thing is already intuitively understood by novices, even before formal instruction begins.
Musical expression from the start.
Bob Duke is the Marlene and Morton Meyerson Centennial Professor, Head of Music and Human Learning, and Director of the Center for Music Learning [cml.music.utexas.edu] at the University of Texas at Austin.
REFERENCES
0
1. Jennifer Kavanagh, “An Exploration into the Learning Process to Independent Cycling in Preschool Children” (doctoral, Dublin City University, 2020), https://doras.dcu.ie/24088/.
2. Robert A. Duke and James L. Byo, The Habits of Musicianship: A Radical Approach to Beginning Band (Austin, TX: Center for Music Learning, 2008), http://cml.music.utexas.edu/Habits/ HabitsOpener.htm.
Renew Your TMEA Membership
ALL 2023–2024 MEMbERSHIpS EXpIRED ON JUNE 30.
Renew Now
Go to tmea.org/renew now and log in to renew your TMEA membership. Ask your district if they will pay for this professional membership!
Update Your Record
When you renew (or before), update your TMEA record with your current school and contact information. Go to tmea.org/memberinfo and log in.
Please don’t create multiple records in your name. If you can’t log in or have other difficulties accessing your record, contact us!
Add Liability Coverage
As a member benefit, TMEA offers this essential coverage at a low cost. You can purchase this policy when you renew for only $30!
Register for the Convention
While you’re online, also register to attend the 2025 Clinic/Convention. We look forward to seeing you in San Antonio February 12–15!
please contact Membership Manager Susan Daugherty at susand@tmea.org with questions about membership. TMEA office hours are M–F, 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
SOUND IDEAS
ELEMENTARY: ENGAGING STUDENTS WITH MINOR MODES
By Chelsea Short
Finding material to keep upper elementary students engaged in our music classrooms can be difficult— encouraging creative music-making can be even more so! In this brief article, I’ll explore how to utilize musical content to engage upper elementary students in active musicmaking with the use of minor modes. By combining fun, creative, (even spooky!) elements with quality repertoire, you can create lessons that incorporate singing, instrument playing, movement, and student composition that captivate upper elementary students.
HOOK THEM FROM THE START
Choosing the correct song, speech, or instrumental piece is the first step. When selecting minor mode repertoire consider two things—the quality of the piece of music and the topic. Is the song grade-level-appropriate and challenging enough to hold your students’ attention? Is the topic one that will captivate your students? Don’t limit yourself to skeletons and ghosts just because you’re in a minor mode! Utilize folk songs, pieces from the Orff Schulwerk volumes, or published poetry to inspire your selections.
STUDENTS AS THE MUSIC MAKERS
The most proven way to promote student buy-in is for the students to be creative musicians. Once you’ve selected your repertoire, consider how you can incorporate student improvisation, composition, or creative movement. Perhaps it is as simple as the students creating movement pieces or vignettes to match a song, acting as a hunter searching high and low for monsters, or as a puppeteer attempting to control a rebellious marionette. Or, have the class create the form of a final in-class performance, playing with layering and solo sections.
On a more involved level, students can work in small groups to create contrasting sections to augment the main piece. This could be an improvised section in your selected mode on barred instruments, recorders, or voice. It could also be a student-composed section. Have students work to create word chains about the characteristics of the monsters they are hunting for (what they look like, how they act, etc.) and add unpitched percussion instruments. Including your students in the creative process empowers them to be producers of the final product.
SHIFTING KNOWN MELODIES TO MINOR MODE
If contrasting sections composed by students isn’t possible, we can find other ways to create an engaging and full experience with
Go to www.tmea.org/short2024 or scan this code to download sample lesson plans, “Revenge of the Puppets” and “Monster Hunting.”
a single piece of music. Music educators are intentional in not overloading students with repertoire so they can experience success in their mastery of the content. Elementary music repertoire is dominated by the Ionian, or major, mode. Take advantage of this great content! By shifting an instrumental piece centered on C up a step to D, you’ve entered Dorian mode and created a completely different sound without having to teach a completely new selection. Try it! Move “Twinkle, Twinkle” up to Dorian, or even Phrygian, and hear the difference! The contrast in sections provides students with something that sounds dramatically different, yet it doesn’t require learning new melodies. What a fun way to extend and add contrast to a piece! (Find an example in the online lesson plan example linked above.)
ELEMENT OF PLAY
As we consider how to improve student engagement through student creativity, we must also emphasize the element of play. Too often we associate musical play with our youngest students, in preparation for improvisation and composition in later grades. Play, however, is crucial to captivating student interest at every level. When teaching the piece about monster hunting, so many students wanted to act out the role of monster hunter for our final in-class performance. The sense of play can be so critical in the ownership and engagement in a piece—not only in creating and composing but also in movement and scene-setting as well. Let your older students play! Create a safe space for them to explore and be imaginative with what they are learning.
Utilizing minor modes in your instruction is an easy way to engage your students and reinvigorate your fall or spring curriculum. I encourage you to explore minor modes with your upper elementary students, encourage student creativity and ownership, and let them play!
Chelsea Short is an Elementary Music Teacher at Bulverde Creek Elementary (North East ISD).
0
INTRODUCING OUR NEW FACULTY
JULIA BELL
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF TRUMPET
Dr. Julia Bell is Assistant Professor of Trumpet at Texas Tech University. Bell was a member of the trumpet section of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra for four years and has also performed with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Panama City Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Gulf Coast, Albany Symphony Orchestra (GA), Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra, Mediterranean Opera Festival Orchestra, Blue Lake Festival Orchestra, and Miami Music Festival Orchestra. As a chamber musician, she has performed as a member of the University of South Alabama Faculty Brass Quintet, Big Bend Brass, and the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp Faculty Brass Quintet. Bell was the thirdplace winner of the Graduate Solo Division of the 2022 National Trumpet Competition and was a featured co-soloist with the Mantzaros Philharmonic during the 2023 Corfu International Trumpet Festival. Dedicated to promoting and performing new works and works by women, her recent solo appearances also include a lecture recital of solo trumpet works by women and performances in the New Works Recitals of both the International Women’s Brass Conference and International Trumpet Guild Conference.
HEIDI JENSEN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF MUSICOLOGY
Heidi Jensen is a musicologist whose work focuses on the intersections of music and philosophy. Her current book project explores ideas of sovereignty, sublimity, and time around hesitations and pauses in sound and music. Before coming to Texas Tech Heidi was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Alfred University where she created interdisciplinary classes and musical ensembles that explore pressing socio-cultural questions through innovative projects in music and sound studies. She holds a BA in anthropology with a minor in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Her dual MM in music history and literature and guitar performance from the University of New Mexico was supported by the Brothwell Guitar Endowment and her thesis work on composer Richard Wagner passed with distinction. She received a PhD in musicology from the University of Florida where her grant-supported archival research on the work of composer Kurt Weill was a starting point for her exploration of ‘song’ as a form of resistance, persistence, and affective communication outside normative social structures. Heidi has served as co-chair for the American Musicological Society’s Ecomusicology Study Group and currently serves on the Editorial Board for Ecomusicology Review.
JASON MULLEN INSTRUCTOR OF GUITAR
Jason Mullen is a guitarist and musicologist. As a guitarist Jason performs in both classical and popular music styles. His performing experience ranges from guitar concertos to experimental media art where he draws upon these broad experiences to inform his research and teaching. Jason’s musicological work investigates “gear cultures” that emerge around the production and consumption of musical instruments. His research focuses on instrument makers and sellers—both large and small—where he articulates the relations between music and materiality within a global supply chain. His academic work has been presented at the American Musicological Society and the Society for Ethnomusicology and he has performed in venues across the US. Jason holds a MM in Guitar Performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a PhD in Music History and Literature from the University of Florida.
ELEMENTARY DIVISION
CHRISTOPHER GILES, STATE VICE-PRESIDENT
When students feel safe, valued, and connected, they’re more likely to engage and participate in learning activities.
Building Community
Afew years into my teaching career I tried something different with my beginning-of-the-year activities. I decided to do away with the seating charts and introductions and put a heavy focus on building community with my first- through fifth-grade students. I wanted to establish a positive and cohesive classroom environment by integrating singing games and dances in the very first class. I hoped it would help enhance community-building, provide informal assessment opportunities, and reveal potential behavior concerns I could address early. To my surprise it accomplished just that, so I have continued to start every year that way since.
Building a sense of community in the elementary classroom from the start is crucial for creating a welcoming and supportive atmosphere. When students feel safe, valued, and connected, they’re more likely to engage and participate in learning activities. Establishing this sense of belonging early helps them build trust and positive relationships with their peers and teachers; this can mitigate behavior issues and boost academic success. When kids sense they belong, they’re more willing to take risks, work together, and develop important social and emotional skills that will benefit them in all areas of their lives.
I spent time at the end of the prior spring semester polling all kindergarten through fourth-grade students. Each class provided a list of three of their favorite games and one of their favorite dances. I compiled their responses into one list for the entire grade level to
MARK YOUR CALENDAR check www.tmea .org for updates
September—Renew membership, purchase liability insurance, register for the convention.
October 3—TMEA convention housing reservation system opens online.
November 1—TMEA scholarship online application deadline.
January 16—TMEA convention early registration deadline.
February 12–15—TMEA Clinic/Convention in San Antonio.
vote on. This list that students had the autonomy to create became the source for the activities of their first class when they returned in the fall.
Singing games and dances can provide valuable opportunities for informal assessment. Through these activities, you can observe students’ musical abilities, such as pitch and rhythm accuracy, beat competency, and vocal quality, in a low-pressure setting.
Informal assessments can help you identify students who may need additional support or those who excel and could benefit from more challenging tasks. Observing students in natural settings, such as during games and singing, provides a more accurate picture of their musical skills compared to formal testing. This approach is particularly beneficial for young learners
who may feel anxious or inhibited during traditional assessments.
Starting the year with familiar material can help you spot potential behavior concerns and the need for student accommodations early on. By observing students during these activities, you can identify patterns of off-task behavior, social difficulties, or attention issues. Here are some suggestions and strategies that may work with your students:
• Observation and Documentation: Watch for recurring behavior issues or signs that a student may need accommodations during singing and games. With behavior, document specific incidents, noting the context and frequency of the behaviors or challenges. Did something trigger the behavior? Did a student have interactions with
TMEA Clinic/Convention
ELEMENTARY DIVISION
Elementary Division Clinics & Concerts
another student that were not positive and respectful?
We often make accommodations for our students to help them be successful. Make note of any additional supports you put in place for a student. This support could include hand-over-hand assistance, frequent redirections, and repeating the directions aloud and in writing for students. These are just a few ideas; you’ll discover many more when working with your students.
This information will be valuable when discussing concerns with parents, administrators, or special education staff.
• Positive Reinforcement: Encourage desirable behaviors; praise students for their cooperation, effort, and positive interactions with peers. The goal is to build community. Focusing on what is going well is a more effective approach to community-building than constantly spotlighting negative behavior.
• Student-Created Consequences: When reviewing the activity in class, have a conversation about expectations regarding behavior. Ask the students what they believe is an appropriate consequence if they fail to meet an expectation. When students know the expectations and help produce the consequences, they are more likely to buy in and meet those expectations. For students needing accommodations, work closely with special education staff to design and implement appropriate support measures. Make sure supports align with their individualized education plan (IEP).
• Engagement Strategies: Ensure that singing and game activities are engaging and appropriately challenging for all students. Boredom or frustration can lead to behavior problems, so adapt your activities to meet the diverse needs of your students. Incorporate a variety of songs and games to keep the lessons dynamic and interesting. This is why having a long list of activities is important. What works well for one first-grade class may not work so well with the next.
• Parent and Guardian Involvement: Communicate regularly with parents
Leigh Ann Garner Franklin Willis
and guardians about their child’s behavior and progress. Share positive observations as well as concerns, and work together to develop strategies for support at home and in the classroom. Starting parent communication early in the year helps you build a positive relationship with them, and it can provide more insight into your students’ behaviors.
Following my first meeting with each class, I go back and build my seating charts. I use the data I collected from my informal assessments regarding skills and behaviors to make conscious decisions about where I place students in the room. I can pair a student who excels in class with another who may need some additional support. Students who didn’t have positive interactions on day one in class can be separated. Students who may need additional accommodations will be closer to me in the room so I can easily check for understanding and support them as needed.
As you begin your school year, I challenge you to come up with ways to build community with your students. Assess them early to make sure you have as big an impact on their academic growth as possible. Be proactive and intentional.
RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP
All 2023–2024 TMEA memberships expired on June 30, so renew your TMEA membership as soon as possible at www. tmea.org/renew. Having a current membership and updated contact information is important as it allows you to access full benefits (including low-cost liability insurance), remain updated on important TMEA news and program opportunities, and support TMEA’s work as champions of music education to state leadership.
CLINIC/CONVENTION UPDATE
If you haven’t yet renewed, you can register at the same time. Otherwise, return to your record now and register to attend our amazing annual event that will be February 12–15, in San Antonio! Go to www.tmea.org/2025concerts for a list of our Elementary Division Invited Ensembles that will perform concerts during the convention. Look to future issues for more details about these amazing groups! In addition to the list of ensembles, go to www.tmea.org/2025clinics to preview a list of the clinics that will be scheduled. The schedule and full clinic
details will be included in the December magazine.
Housing note: Hotel reservations begin Thursday, October 3. Earlier that week, an email from TMEA will include updated and important instructions for accessing the reservation system. Follow those instructions to ensure you can access the reservation system and have the most reliable experience possible. Until then, go to www.tmea.org/hotelrates for a preview of the hotels. Be aware of hotel reservation scams. Members and exhibitors
consistently receive emails and calls regarding housing from external sources. None of these are official.
If you’re seeking an administrator’s support to attend the convention, go to www.tmea.org/2025glance to download the 2025 Schedule at a Glance to offer them a high-level view of the schedule. 0
Christopher Giles is a K–5 music specialist at Mireles Elementary (Northside ISD, San Antonio). elementaryvp@tmea.org
SOUND IDEAS
COLLEGE: OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES IN MUSIC EDUCATION
By Tanya Allen
My introduction to open educational resources (OER) occurred at a workshop in 2017. Participants were tasked with revamping a course for the fall to include OER, which are openly licensed materials digitally available for teaching and learning. I chose to pull readings from the textbook Music and the Child by Natalie Sarrazin for use in a music pedagogy course for non-music majors. Open textbooks, like Music and the Child, are accessible in several formats, openly licensed with few or no restrictions, and are free of charge for users. The ease of access for students, and flexibility for educators, are a few reasons OER continue to gain momentum in PK–12 and post-secondary education. And while our inexperience with OER in music has limited our exposure to these nontraditional resources, I believe OER provide viable options for music education and are worth considering for use in our classrooms.
VISIT OER REPOSITORIES
For those new to OER who are interested in learning more about what is available, exploring several repositories is the first step. Beyond the Open Textbook Library, there are several repositories that house OER such as Merlot (www.merlot.org) and OER Commons (oercommons.org). Becoming familiar with varied repositories and how they are organized is essential to avoid being overwhelmed by the volume of resources. Because most repositories house the same OER, locating one site that creates an efficient user experience should be where interested music educators start.
SEARCH FOR OER TO USE
After identifying a repository, begin searching for resources to use. This search can be a general perusal of resources and materials or a search for a specific type of resource based on a topic or concept. I would search on a topic based on course learning outcomes and learner needs; this will streamline your search while providing access to all relevant resources, including lesson plans, learning modules, and assessments. For example, I have compiled various resources from the Open Textbook Library (open.umn.edu/ opentextbooks) to help rethink our approach to the music appreciation course. Textbooks such as Resonances and Music in World Cultures highlight varied approaches to the course and include music from wider cultural and geographical spaces.
Once you have located options for use, determine the permissions based on the Creative Commons license before using. Learn more at www.creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses.
COMPILE, LICENSE, SHARE
This suggestion may seem like a leap, but we all have accumulated specially made resources and materials that have worked
amazingly in our music classrooms. Taking time to organize our content for sharing could help create a more diverse library of resources, which may incentivize more music educators to consider using OER. The Creative Commons website provides a simple way to view and understand the different permissions related to each license, and a simple download provides the license to share materials. Uploading resources directly to the Merlot repository or using OpenAuthor through OER Commons is relatively easy and provides additional resources for a novice or continuing music educator to access.
EDUCATE OUR STUDENTS
As a teacher educator, providing preservice and beginning teachers with effective teaching and learning theories and practices is a priority. Equally essential is engaging them with resources and tools to navigate successfully as a creative and innovative 21stcentury music educator. Introduce your students to OER and teach them how to safely and openly share information; encourage them to openly license and share artifacts created in our courses and scaffold accordingly for any level of music-learning. Specifically for post-secondary education, pedagogy-specific OER continue to increase in the repositories; options for conducting, brass methods, and vocal techniques for the instrumentalist are topics preservice music teachers need. Encouraging preservice music teachers to evaluate the quality and accuracy of OER is another teaching and learning practice that will engage students with the resource while incorporating skills that will benefit them as independent educators.
A key idea behind OER and other open initiatives is to increase access and opportunity for the sharing of knowledge by all and for all. The suggestions above are just a few ways to incorporate open educational resources and practices into our teaching. While every suggestion may not interest everyone, all suggestions are necessary to expand the use of OER in our profession.
As with any shift in practice, discomfort and disinterest are natural. And although moving outside of what is traditional and considering other options may take time, it is worth the effort. So, as we share in music-learning with our students this year, consider determining whether there is OER that would innovate or enhance our practice, and let us find it or create it and share it. 0
Tanya Allen is Associate Professor of Music Education and Acting Department Chair at Texas Southern University.
COLLEGE DIVISION
CARTER BIGGERS, STATE VICE-PRESIDENT
I hope that with intentional reflection, I can prepare myself for the challenge of meeting my students where they are and assist them in becoming the best version of themselves both in and out of the classroom.
Limitless Potential
In my May column, I encouraged you to consider your why over the summer as you worked to rest, reflect, and recharge for the new year. Well, the new year is here. Are you ready? I know you are!
The start of each new year brings a sense of renewed hope and optimism. Among the many things I look forward to, what I enjoy the most is the rekindled connection with students. Many went home for the summer to be with their families. Some traveled abroad, and others stayed around to work or help with summer music camps and other teaching/volunteering opportunities. I revel in seeing our students’ bright faces as we greet them upon their return to campus. I love hearing the many stories of their summer adventures, near and far. I also want to know what their goals are for the upcoming year so I can do my best to help them achieve those goals.
A new year also raises many questions for me. What went well last year that I want to continue to reinforce? What might not have gone as planned that I can improve this year? How can I best serve my students both in and out of the classroom as they continue to navigate their education and this phase of life? These reflective questions help guide my teaching and mentorship not only at the beginning but also all year long. I hope that with this type of reflection, I can prepare
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
check www.tmea .org for updates
September—Renew membership, purchase liability insurance, register for the convention.
October 1 —TMEA College research proposal grant application deadline.
October 3 —TMEA convention housing reservation system opens online.
October 4 —TMEA College Fall Conference in Austin.
October 15— Research poster session proposal submission deadline.
November 1 —Collegiate Music Educator Award nomination deadline.
November 1—TMEA scholarship online application deadline.
December 15 —College Student Essay submission deadline.
January 16 —TMEA convention early registration deadline.
February 12–15 —TMEA Clinic/Convention in San Antonio.
myself for the challenge of meeting my students where they are and assist them in becoming the best version of themselves both in and out of the classroom.
For those of you who don’t know me, I am a huge Ted Lasso fan. One of my favorite quotes from the series comes in the first episode when Ted first enters the AFC Richmond locker room. He says to Coach Beard, “I do love a locker room. Smells like potential.” So, to paraphrase Ted—I do love my students. Their potential is limitless. My goal this year is to help them unlock that potential through steady guidance and support. I challenge you to do the same. Are you up for the challenge?
COLLEGE DIVISION FALL CONFERENCE
If you haven’t already, mark your calendar for the College Division Fall Conference on Friday, October 4, at the TMEA office in Austin. All College Division Active members are invited to attend at no charge, and a wonderful lunch is included. I will soon email the schedule along with a request to RSVP.
If you have never had a chance to attend or visit the TMEA office, I highly recommend it. This meeting is an opportunity for us to engage with our colleagues across the state and get updated on issues directly affecting our division. Since much of our division’s business is conducted at this fall conference rather than at the Region level, your presence is vital to our future. In addition to our division business (which will include committee meetings and updates), we will have a chance to get to know TMEA Executive Director Joe Muñoz and the rest of the TMEA staff who work tirelessly to make our great organization run smoothly.
COLLEGE STUDENT ESSAY CONTEST
Our College Student Essay Contest had a wonderful relaunch this past year with numerous submissions and two fantastic winning essays and scholars. Thanks to the work of Julie Scott (SMU) and the Article Review Committee, we are poised to have another great year of this contest. Encourage your students (undergraduate and graduate) to consider participating this year. Not only is the process of scholarly writing of great value to our profession, but TMEA also awards $2,000 to
each winner. For more information, visit www.tmea.org/essaycontest.
MEMBERSHIP & SCHOLARSHIPS
If you haven’t yet renewed your TMEA membership, now is the time (all 2023–2024 memberships expired on June 30). Maintaining your active membership is crucial to the continued success of TMEA. From the professional perspective of staying abreast of state law and policy developments that directly affect our programs and students, to the personal perspective with the opportunity to actively participate in research, presentations, and advocacy programs, the value of your membership can’t be quantified. To renew now, go to www.tmea.org/renew, and encourage any music education colleagues and students who aren’t yet members to join at www.tmea.org/join.
When renewing your membership (or at any time), you can also contribute to the TMEA Scholarship Fund. TMEA annually provides a generous number of scholarships to students across the state. From undergraduate to graduate to student-teaching scholarships, these awards are made possible by the generosity of our membership, which includes you. Please consider supporting this worthy endeavor by making your contribution today!
SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATIONS
The TMEA scholarship portal is open until Friday, November 1, at 4:30 p.m. CT, for undergraduate and graduate scholarship applications, including student teachers.
I’m pleased to share that for the first time, the Robert Floyd Scholarship for Music Education will be awarded to one undergraduate student applicant, with $4,000
TMEA Clinic/Convention
COLLEGE DIVISION
awarded annually for up to four years. Especially valuable to students nearing the completion of their undergraduate degree are student-teaching scholarships awarded each year to current TMEA College Student members (this application period will be for those student-teaching in the spring or fall of 2025). For eligibility information and to apply go to www.tmea.org/ scholarships.
CLINIC/CONVENTION UPDATE
Our thanks go to Brett Richardson (Texas Lutheran Univ), Crystal Gerrard-Ramirez (Univ of North Texas), and members of the College Division Clinic Review and IDEA Committee for their amazing work on reviewing clinic proposals for the 2025 convention. There was a 32% increase in proposals to review from the previous year, which shows that our division’s
TMEA Convention Registration and Hotel Reservations
Register early to pay the lowest fee to attend! www.tmea.org/register
Hotel Reservations
TMEA’s official hotel reservation system opens October 3.
Note! Early in the first week of October, TMEA will email members instructions for accessing the housing reservation system.
research and professional contributions are alive and well! I am confident that the slate of sessions that have been selected for our division (among the many excellent submissions) will both be enjoyable and professionally fulfilling. A preview of the clinics and clinicians will be public on September 1 at www.tmea.org/2025clinics.
As you review the list of incredible clinicians who will be presenting at our convention February 12–15 in San Antonio, take a moment to register for the convention if you haven’t already. You can register when you renew your membership or after by going to www.tmea.org/register.
Housing note: Hotel reservations begin Thursday, October 3. Earlier that week, an email from TMEA will include updated and important instructions for accessing the reservation system. Follow those instructions to ensure you can access the reservation system and have the most reliable experience possible. Until then, go to www.tmea.org/hotelrates for a preview of convention hotels. Be aware of hotel reservation scams. Members and exhibitors consistently receive emails and calls from external sources regarding housing. None of these are official. 0
Carter Biggers, DMA, is Director of Bands and Associate Professor of Music at Texas Woman’s University. collegevp@tmea.org
